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GUARANTEES OF PEACE 



Books by 
WOODROW WILSON 

INTERNATIONAL IDEALS 

GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR 

WHY WE ARE AT WAR 

A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF 

ON BEING HUMAN 

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK 
[Established 1817] 



Guarantees of Peace 

Messages and Addresses to the Congress 

and the People, Jan. 3 1, 1 918, to Dec. 2, 1918 

Together with the Peace Notes to Qermany 

and Austria 

BY 

WOODROW WILSON 

FBESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

with 

An Appendix Containing 

the Corrected Text of 

the Armistice 




Harper & Brothers Publishers 
New York and London 







Guarantees of Peace 



Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers 

Printed in the United States of America 

Published January, 1919 

D-T 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. 



Foreword j 

I. An Appeal to the Farmers i 

(January ji, 1918) 

II. Address to the Congress 9 

{February 11, 191 8) 

III. Co-operation or Obstruction? . . . . 21 

{Message to Striking Carpenters in Eastern 
Shipyards, February 17, 1918) 

IV. A Pledge of Help to Russia .... 23 

(March 11, 191 8) 

V. Force to the Utmost, for Right ... 25 

(April 6, 1 918) 

VI. The Burden of War Taxation .... 33 

(Address to the Congress, May 27, 1918) 

VII. Independence Day Address 42 

(July 4, 1 91 8) 

VIII. The Mob Spirit Denounced 49 

(Message to the American People, July 26 1 
1918) 

IX The Second Conscription Proclamation 53 
(August 31, 1 91 8) 

X. The Answer to Austria's Request for a 

Conference c-j 

(September 16, 1918) 

XI. Impartial Justice the Price of Peace . 58 

(September 27, 1918) 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

XII. Address to the Senate on Woman Suf- 

frage 71 

(September 30, 1918) 

XIII. A Question for the German Chancellor 78 

(October 8, 1918) 

XIV. The Reply to Germany 80 

(October 14, 1918) 

XV. The Reply to Austria-Hungary ... 84 

(October 19, 1918) 

XVI. Autocracy Must Go 86 

(October 23, 191 8) 

XVII. An Appeal to the Electorate for Polit- 

ical Support 91 

(October 25, 191 8) 

XVIII. The Great War Is Ended ...... 95 

(Address to the Congress, November u , 
1918) 

XIX. A Proclamation of Thanksgiving for 

Victory 111 

(November 17, 1918) 

XX. Problems of Readjustment 113 

(December 2, 1918) 
Appendix 139 



FOREWORD - 

The present volume, containing the mes- 
sages and addresses of the President of the 
United States from January 31, 19 18, to De- 
cember 2, 1 91 8, supplements the two earlier 
collections — Why We Are at War and In Our 
First Year of War. The series, as a whole, 
presents in convenient and permanent form 
the public utterances of the President through- 
out the critical period of our entrance into the 
World War, a record of vital and enduring 
interest to every patriotic American. The 
table of contents also includes the later diplo- 
matic correspondence with Germany and 
Austria-Hungary, while the corrected text of 
the armistice agreement is printed as an 
appendix. 

Among the more important public papers 
are the address to the Congress, February 11, 
191 8; the famous "Force to the Utmost" 
speech, delivered at Baltimore, April 6, 191 8, 
in behalf of the Third Liberty Loan; the ad- 
dress to the Congress, May 27, 1918, in which, 
after asking for financial support of the war 
program, the President went on to announce 



FOREWORD 

the beginning of the long expected drive on the 
west front, and spoke extemporaneously con- 
cerning the spirit of the nation now attuned 
to the one thought of common sacrifice; the 
Independence Day oration, delivered at Mount 
Vernon, in which he elucidated the four es- 
sential ends for which the United States and 
its Allies were contending; the Second Con- 
scription Proclamation, August 31, 19 18; the 
address in behalf of the Fourth Liberty Loan, 
delivered at the Metropolitan Opera House, 
New York, September 27, 191 8, in which he 
clearly defined the issues that must be settled, 
and finally rejected the idea of any peace by 
compromise ; the address to the Congress, No- 
vember 11, 1 91 8, in which the President an- 
nounced the virtual end of the war as co- 
incident with the signing of the armistice; and 
lastly the eagerly awaited annual message to 
Congress, delivered orally December 2, 191 8, 
before both Houses in joint session, on the 
eve of the President's departure for Europe, 
in which Mr. Wilson discussed certain prob- 
lems of reconstruction, and spoke in general 
terms concerning the necessity of his personal 
attendance upon the Peace Conference. 

Significant and inspiring as were these mes- 
sages and addresses in their original form of 
newspaper publication, they gain added dig- 
nity and importance when considered in their 
complete chronological order. To millions of 



FOREWORD 

the oppressed peoples of the Old World the name 
of Woodrow Wilson connotes the idea of present 
deliverance and of future justice; his is the one 
strong voice proclaiming the reign of law and 
of righteousness, "the destruction of every 
arbitrary power anywhere that can separately, 
secretly, and of its single choice disturb the 
peace of the world," and the inevitable 
triumph of idealism over the dark forces of 
materialism and national self-seeking. 

For the title, the subheadings, and the 
general editing of the subject-matter the pub- 
lishers are responsible. As in the case of the 
earlier collections of the President's public 
papers, the customary author's royalties are to 
be paid over to the American Red Cross. 



GUARANTEES OF PEACE 



AN APPEAL TO THE FARMERS 
{January 31, igi8) 

Through the Farmers' Conference, held at the 
University of Illinois, at Urbana, the President 
sent the following message to the farmers of the 
United States: 

I am very sorry, indeed, that I cannot be 
present in person at the Urbana conference. 
I should like to enjoy the benefit of the in- 
spiration and exchange of counsel which I 
know I should obtain, but in the circumstances 
it has seemed impossible for me to be present, 
and therefore I can only send you a very 
earnest message expressing my interest and 
the thoughts which such a conference must 
bring prominently into every mind. 

I need not tell you, for I am sure you realize 
as keenly as I do that we are as a nation in 
the presence of a great task, which demands 
supreme sacrifice and endeavor of every one 
of us. We can give everything that is needed 



2 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

with the greater willingness and even satisfac- 
tion because the object of the war in which we 
are engaged is the greatest that free men have 
ever undertaken. It is to prevent the life of 
the world from being determined and the 
fortunes of men everywhere affected by small 
groups of military masters, who seek their own 
interest and the selfish dominion throughout 
the world of the governments they unhappily 
for the moment control. 

NEW WAR OF THE REVOLUTION 

You will not need to be convinced that it 
was necessary for us as a free people to take 
part in this war. It had raised its evil hand 
against us. The rulers of Germany had sought 
to exercise their power in such a way as to shut 
off our economic life, so far as our intercourse 
with Europe was concerned, and to confine 
our people within the Western Hemisphere, 
while they accomplished purposes which would 
have permanently impaired and impeded every 
process of our national life, and have put the 
fortunes of America at the mercy of the Impe- 
rial Government of Germany. This was no 
threat. It had become a reality. Their hand 
of violence had been laid upon our own people 
and our own property, in flagrant violation, 
not only of justice, but of the well-recognized 
and long-standing covenants of international 
law and treaty. We are fighting, therefore, 



AN APPEAL TO THE FARMERS 3 

as truly for the liberty and self-government 
of the United States as if the war of our own 
Revolution had to be fought over again, and 
every man in every business in the United 
States must know by this time that his whole 
future fortune lies in the balance. Our 
national life and our whole economic develop- 
ment will pass under the sinister influences of 
foreign control if we do not win. We must 
win, therefore, and we shall win. I need not 
ask you to pledge your lives and fortunes, with 
those of the rest of the nation, to the accom- 
plishment of that great end. 

CULMINATING CRISIS AT HAND 

You will realize, as I think statesmen on 
both sides of the water realize, that the 
culminating crisis of the struggle has come, and 
that the achievements of this year on the one 
side or the other must determine the issue. 
It has turned out that the forces that fight 
for freedom, the freedom of men all over the 
world as well as our own, depend upon us in 
an extraordinary and unexpected degree for 
sustenance, for the supply of the materials by 
which men are to live and to fight, and it will 
be our glory when the war is over that we have 
supplied those materials, and supplied them 
abundantly, and it will be all the more glory 
because in supplying them we have made our 
supreme effort and sacrifice. 



4 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

In the field of agriculture we have agencies 
and instrumentalities, fortunately, such as no 
other Government in the world can show. 
The Department of Agriculture is undoubtedly 
the greatest practical and scientific agricultural 
organization in the world. The banking legis- 
lation of the last two or three years has given 
the farmers access to the great lendable capital 
of the country, and it has become the duty 
both of the men in charge of the Federal 
Reserve banking system and of the farm loan 
banking system to see to it that the farmers 
obtain the credit, both short term and long 
term, to which they are entitled not only, 
but which it is imperatively necessary should 
be extended to them if the present tasks of 
the country are to be adequately performed. 
Both by direct purchase of nitrates and by the 
establishment of plants to produce nitrates, 
the Government is doing its utmost to assist 
in the problem of fertilization. The Depart- 
ment of Agriculture and other agencies are 
actively assisting the farmers to locate, safe- 
guard, and secure at cost an adequate supply 
of sound seed. The Department has $2,500,- 
000 available for this purpose now and has 
asked Congress for $6,000,000 more. 

THE LABOR PROBLEM 

The labor problem is one of great difficulty, 
and some of the best agencies of the nation 



AN APPEAL TO THE FARMERS 5 

are addressing themselves to the task of solv- 
ing it, so far as it is possible to solve it. Farm- 
ers have not been exempted from the draft. 
I know that they would not wish to be. I take 
it for granted they would not wish to be put 
in a class by themselves in this respect. 
But the attention of the War Department has 
been very seriously centered upon the task of 
interfering with the labor of the farms as little 
as possible, and under the new draft regula- 
tions I believe that the farmers of the country 
will find that their supply of labor is very 
much less seriously drawn upon than it was 
under the first and initial draft, made before 
we had our present full experience in these 
perplexing matters. The supply of labor in 
all industries is a matter we must look to and 
are looking to with diligent care. 

SPLENDID RESPONSE BY FARMERS 

And let me say that the stimulation of the 
agencies I have enumerated has been responded 
to by the farmers in splendid fashion. I dare 
say that you are aware that the farmers of 
this country are as efficient as any other 
farmers in the world. They do not produce 
more per acre than the farmers in Europe. It 
is not necessary that they should do so. It 
would perhaps be bad economy for them to 
attempt it. But they do produce by two to 
three or four times more per man, per unit 



6 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

of labor and capital, than the farmers of any 
European country. They are more alert and 
use more labor-saving devices than any other 
farmers in the world. And their response to 
the demands of the present emergency has 
been in every way remarkable. Last spring 
their planting exceeded by 12,000,000 acres 
the largest planting of any previous year, and 
the yields from the crops were record-breaking 
yields. In the fall of 191 7 a wheat acreage 
of 42,170,000 was planted, which was one 
million larger than for any preceding year, 
three millions greater than the next largest, 
and seven millions greater than the preceding 
five-year average. 

But I ought to say to you that it is not only 
necessary that these achievements should be 
repeated, but that they should be exceeded. 
I know what this advice involves. It involves 
not only labor, but sacrifice, the painstaking 
application of every bit of scientific knowledge 
and every tested practice that is available. 
It means the utmost economy, even to the 
point where the pinch comes. It means the 
kind of concentration and self-sacrifice which 
is involved in the field of battle itself, where 
the object always looms greater than the in- 
dividual. And yet the Government will help 
and help in every way that it is possible. The 
impression which prevails in some quarters 
that while the Government has sought to fix 



AN APPEAL TO THE FARMERS 7 

the prices of foodstuffs it has not sought to 
fix other prices which determine the expenses 
of the farmer, is a mistaken one. As a matter 
of fact, the Government has actively and suc- 
cessfully regulated the prices of many funda- 
mental materials underlying all the industries 
of the country and has regulated them not 
only for the purchases of the Government, but 
also for the purchases of the general public, 
and I have every reason to believe that the 
Congress will extend the powers of the Govern- 
ment in this important and even essential 
matter, so that the tendency to profiteering 
which is showing itself in too many quarters 
may be effectively checked. In fixing the 
prices of foodstuffs, the Government has sin- 
cerely tried to keep the interests of the farmer 
as much in mind as the interests of the com- 
munities which are to be served, but it is 
serving mankind, as well as the farmer, and 
everything in these times of war takes on the 
rigid aspect of duty. 

America's greatest opportunity 

I will not appeal to you to continue and 
renew and increase your efforts. I do not 
believe that it is necessary to do so. I believe 
that you will do it without any word or appeal 
from me, because you understand as well as I 
do the needs and opportunities of this great 
hour, when the fortunes of mankind every- 



8 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

where seem about to be determined, and when 
America has the greatest opportunity she has 
ever had to make good her own freedom, and 
in making it good to lend a helping hand to 
men struggling for their freedom everywhere. 
You remember that it was farmers from whom 
came the first shots at Lexington, that set 
aflame the revolution that made America free. 
I hope and believe that the farmers of America 
will willingly and conspicuously stand by to 
win this war, also. 

The toil, the intelligence, the energy, the 
foresight, the self-sacrifice, and devotion of the 
farmers of America will, I believe, bring to a 
triumphant conclusion this great last war for 
the emancipation of men from the control of 
arbitrary government and the selfishness of 
class legislation and control, and then, when 
the end has come, we may look each other in 
the face and be glad that we are Americans 
and have had the privilege to play such a part. 



II 

ADDRESS TO THE CONGRESS 
{February u, 1918) 

Gentlemen of the Congress, — On the 
8th of January I had the honor of addressing 
you on the objects of the war as our people 
conceive them. The Prime Minister of Great 
Britain had spoken in similar terms on the 5th 
of January. To these addresses the German 
Chancellor replied on the 24th, and Count 
Czernin for Austria on the same day. It is 
gratifying to have our desire so promptly 
realized that all exchanges of views on this 
great matter should be made in the hearing 
of all the world. 

Count Czernin's reply, which is directed 
chiefly to my own address, on the 8th of 
January, is uttered in a very friendly tone. 
He finds in my statement a sufficiently en- 
couraging approach to the views of his own 
Government to justify him in believing that it 
furnishes a basis for a more detailed discussion 
of purposes by the two Governments. He is 
represented to have intimated that the views 



io GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

he was expressing had been communicated to 
me beforehand and that I was aware of them 
at the time he was uttering them, but in this 
I am sure he was misunderstood. I had re- 
ceived no intimation of what he intended to 
say. There was, of course, no reason why he 
should communicate privately with me. I 
am quite content to be one of his public 
audience. 

VON HERTLING VAGUE AND CONFUSING 

Count von Hertling's reply is, I must say, 
very vague and very confusing. It is full of 
equivocal phrases and leads it is not clear 
where. But it is certainly in a very different 
tone from that of Count Czernin, and appar- 
ently of an opposite purpose. It confirms, I 
am sorry to say, rather than removes, the 
unfortunate impression made by what we had 
learned of the conferences at Brest-Litovsk. 
His discussion and acceptance of our general 
principles lead him to no practical conclusions. 
He refuses to apply them to the substantive 
items which must constitute the body of any 
final settlement. He is jealous of international 
action and of international counsel. He ac- 
cepts, he says, the principle of public diplo- 
macy, but he appears to insist that it be con- 
fined, at any rate in this case, to generalities 
and that the several particular questions of 
territory and sovereignty, the several ques- 



ADDRESS TO THE CONGRESS n 

tions upon whose settlement must depend the 
acceptance of peace by the twenty-three states 
now engaged in the war, must be discussed and 
settled, not in general council, but severally, 
by the nations most immediately concerned by 
interest or neighborhood. He agrees that the 
seas should be free, but looks askance at any 
limitation to that freedom by international 
action in the interest of the common order. 
He would without reserve be glad to see 
economic barriers removed between nation 
and nation, for that could in no way impede the 
ambitions of the military party with whom he 
seems constrained to keep on terms. Neither 
does he raise objection to a limitation of 
armaments. That matter will be settled of 
itself, he thinks, by the economic conditions 
which must follow the war. 

THE CHANCELLOR'S LIMITED CONCESSIONS 

But the German colonies, he demands, must 
be returned without debate. He will discuss 
with no one but the representatives of Russia 
what disposition shall be made of the peoples 
and lands of the Baltic provinces; with no one 
but the Government of France the " condi- 
tions" under which French territory shall be 
evacuated, and only with Austria what shall 
be done with Poland. In the determination 
of all questions affecting the Balkan states 
he defers, as I understand him, to Austria and 



12 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

Turkey; and with regard to the agreements 
to be entered into concerning the non-Turkish 
peoples of the present Ottoman Empire to the 
Turkish authorities themselves. After a set- 
tlement all around, effected in this fashion, by 
individual barter and concession, he would 
have no objection, if I correctly interpret his 
statement, to a league of nations which would 
undertake to hold the new balance of power 
steady against external disturbances. 

PEACE OF WORLD AT STAKE 

It must be evident to every one who under- 
stands what this war has wrought in the 
opinion and temper of the world that no 
general peace, no peace worth the infinite 
sacrifices of these years of tragical suffering, 
can possibly be arrived at in any such fashion. 
The method the German Chancellor proposes 
is the method of the Congress of Vienna. We 
cannot and will not return to that. What is 
at stake now is the peace of the world. What 
we are striving for is a new international order 
based upon broad and universal principles of 
right and justice — no mere peace of shreds and 
patches. Is it possible that Count von Hertling 
does not see that, does not grasp it ; is, in fact, 
living in his thought in a world dead and gone ? 
Has he utterly forgotten the Reichstag resolu- 
tions of July 19th, or does he deliberately ig- 
nore them? They spoke of the conditions of 



ADDRESS TO THE CONGRESS 13 

a general peace, not of national aggrandize- 
ment or of arrangements between state and 
state. The peace of the world depends upon 
the just settlement of each of the several 
problems to which I adverted in my recent 
address to the Congress. 

I, of course, do not mean that the peace of 
the world depends upon the acceptance of any 
particular set of suggestions as to the way in 
which those problems are to be dealt with. I 
mean only that those problems, each and all, 
affect the whole world; that unless they are 
dealt with in a spirit of unselfish and unbiased 
justice, with a view to the wishes, the natural 
connections, the racial aspirations, the security 
and peace of mind of the peoples involved, no 
permanent peace will have been attained. 
They cannot be discussed separately or in 
corners. None of them constitutes a private 
or separate interest from which the opinion 
of the world may be shut out. Whatever 
affects the peace affects mankind, and nothing 
settled by military force, if settled wrong, is 
settled at all. It will presently have to be 
reopened. 

THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED 

Is Count von Hertling not aware that he is 
speaking in the court of mankind, that all 
the awakened nations of the world now sit in 
judgment on what every public man, of what- 



i 4 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

ever nation, may say on the issues of a conflict 
which has spread to every region of the world? 
The Reichstag resolutions of July themselves 
frankly accepted the decisions of that court. 
There shall be no annexations, no contribu- 
tions, no punitive damages. Peoples are not 
to be handed about from one sovereignty to 
another by an international conference or an 
understanding between rivals and antagonists. 
National aspirations must be respected; peo- 
ples may now be dominated and governed 
only by their own consent. "Self-determina- 
tion" is not a mere phrase. It is an im- 
perative principle of action, which statesmen 
will henceforth ignore at their peril. We can- 
not have general peace for the asking, or by 
the mere arrangements of a peace conference. 
It cannot be pieced together, but of individual 
understandings between powerful states. 

All the parties to this war must join in the 
settlement of every issue anywhere involved 
in it, because what we are seeking is a peace 
that we can all unite to guarantee and main- 
tain, and every item of it must be submitted 
to the common judgment whether it be right 
and fair, an act of justice, rather than a bar- 
gain between sovereigns. 

NO DESIRE TO INTERFERE 

The United States has no desire to interfere 
in European affairs, or to act as arbiter in 



ADDRESS TO THE CONGRESS 15 

European territorial disputes. She would dis- 
dain to take advantage of any internal weak- 
ness or disorder to impose her own will upon 
another people. She is quite ready to be 
shown that the settlements she has suggested 
are not the best or the most enduring. They 
are only her own provisional sketch of prin- 
ciples, and of the way in which they should be 
applied. But she entered this war because she 
was made a partner, whether she would or not, 
in the sufferings and indignities inflicted by 
the military masters of Germany, against the 
peace and security of mankind, and the con- 
ditions of peace will touch her as nearly as 
they will touch any other nation to which is 
intrusted a leading part in the maintenance of 
civilization. She cannot see her way to peace 
until the causes of this war are removed, its re- 
newal rendered as nearly as may be impossible. 

war's roots in disregarded rights 

This war had its roots in the disregard of 
the rights of small nations and of nationalities 
which lacked the union and the force to make 
good their claim to determine their own alle- 
giances and their own forms of political life. 
Covenants must now be entered into which 
will render such things impossible for the 
future; and those covenants must be backed 
by the united force of all the nations that love 
justice and are willing to maintain it at any 



16 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

cost. If territorial settlements and the po- 
litical relations of great populations which 
have not the organized power to resist are to 
be determined by the contracts of the powerful 
Governments which consider themselves most 
directly affected, as Count von Hertling pro- 
poses, why may not economic questions also? 
It has come about in the altered world in which 
we now find ourselves that justice and the 
rights of peoples affect the whole field of in- 
ternational dealing, as much as access to raw 
materials and fair and equal conditions of 
trade. Count von Hertling wants the essen- 
tial basis of commercial and industrial life to 
be safeguarded by common agreement and 
guarantee, but he cannot expect that to be 
conceded him, if the other matters to be de- 
termined by the articles of peace are not 
handled in the same way as items in the final 
accounting. He cannot ask the benefit of 
common agreement in the one field without 
according it in the other. I take it for granted 
that he sees that separate and selfish compacts 
with regard to trade and the essential materials 
of manufacture would afford no foundation for 
peace. Neither, he may rest assured, will 
separate and selfish compacts with regard to 
provinces and peoples. 

Count Czernin seems to see the fundamental 
elements of peace with clear eyes and does 
not seek to obscure them. He sees that an 



ADDRESS TO THE CONGRESS 17 

independent Poland, made up of all the indis- 
putably Polish peoples who lie contiguous to 
one another, is a matter of European concern, 
and must, of course, be conceded; that Bel- 
gium must be evacuated and restored, no 
matter what sacrifices and concessions that 
may involve, and that national aspirations 
must be satisfied, even within his own Empire, 
in the common interest of Europe and man- 
kind. If he is silent about questions which 
touch the interest and purpose of his allies 
more nearly than they touch those of Austria 
only, it must, of course, be because he feels 
constrained, I suppose, to defer to Germany 
and Turkey in the circumstances. 

Seeing and conceding, as he does, the es- 
sential principles involved and the necessity 
of candidly applying them, he naturally feels 
that Austria can respond to the purpose of 
peace as expressed by the United States with 
less embarrassment than could Germany. He 
would probably have gone much further had 
it not been for the embarrassments of Aus- 
tria's alliances and of her dependence upon 
Germany. 

PRINCIPLES TO BE APPLIED 

After all, the test of whether it is possible 
for either Government to go any further in 
this comparison of views is simple and obvious. 
The principles to be applied are these : 



18 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

First, that each part of the final settlement 
must be based upon the essential justice of 
that particular case, and upon such adjust- 
ments as are most likely to bring a peace that 
will be permanent. 

Second, that peoples and provinces are not 
to be bartered about from sovereignty to sov- 
ereignty, as if they were mere chattels and 
pawns in a game, even the great game, now 
forever discredited, of the balance of power; 
but that, 

Third, every territorial settlement involved 
in this war must be made in the interest and 
for the benefit of the populations concerned, 
and not as a part of any mere adjustment or 
compromise of claims among rival states ; and, 

Fourth, that all well-defined national as- 
pirations shall be accorded the utmost satis- 
faction that can be accorded them without 
introducing new or perpetuating old elements 
of discord and antagonism that would be 
likely in time to break the peace of Europe 
and consequently of the world. 

A general peace erected upon such founda- 
tions can be discussed. Until such a peace 
can be secured we have no choice but to go 
on. So far as we can judge, these principles 
that we regard as fundamental are already 
everywhere accepted as imperative except 
among the spokesmen of the military and an- 
nexationist party in Germany. If they have 



ADDRESS TO THE CONGRESS 19 

anywhere else been rejected the objectors 
have not been sufficiently numerous or in- 
fluential to make their voices audible. The 
tragical circumstance is that this one party 
in Germany is apparently willing and able to 
send millions of men to their death to prevent 
what all the world now sees to be just. 

A WAR OF EMANCIPATION 

I would not be a true spokesman of the 
people of the United States if I did not say 
once more that we entered this war upon no 
small occasion and that we can never turn 
back from a course chosen upon principle. 
Our resources are, in part, mobilized now, 
and we shall not pause until they are mobilized 
in their entirety. Our armies are rapidly go- 
ing to the fighting front, and will go more and 
more rapidly. Our whole strength will be put 
into this war of emancipation — emancipation 
from the threat and attempted mastery of 
selfish groups of autocratic rulers — whatever 
the difficulties and present partial delays. 
We are indomitable in our power of indepen- 
dent action and can in no circumstances con- 
sent to live in a world governed by intrigue 
and force. We believe that our own desire 
for a new international order under which 
reason and justice and the common interests 
of mankind shall prevail is the desire of en- 
lightened men everywhere. Without that 



20 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

new order the world will be without peace 
and human life will lack tolerable conditions of 
existence and development. Having set our 
hand to the task of achieving it, we shall not 
turn back. 

I hope that it is not necessary for me to 
add, no word of what I have said is intended 
as a threat. That is not the temper of our 
people. I have spoken thus only that the 
whole world may know the true spirit of 
America — that men everywhere may know 
that our passion for justice and for self-govern- 
ment is no mere passion of words, but a passion 
which, once set in action, must be satisfied. 
The power of the United States is a menace 
to no nation or people. It will never be used 
in aggression or for the aggrandizement of any 
selfish interest of our own. It springs out of 
freedom, and is for the service of freedom. 



Ill 



CO-OPERATION OR OBSTRUCTION? 

(Message to Striking Carpenters in Eastern Shipyards, 

February 17, 1918) 

William L. Hutcheson, General Presi- 
dent United Brotherhood of Carpenters 
and Joiners op America, New York, — I 
have received your telegram of yesterday and 
am very glad to note the expression of your 
desire as a patriotic citizen to assist in carry- 
ing on the work by which we are trying to 
save America and men everywhere who work 
and are free. Taking advantage of that assur- 
ance, I feel it to be my duty to call your atten- 
tion to the fact that the strike of the carpenters 
in the shipyards is in marked and painful con- 
trast to the action of labor in other trades and 
places. Ships are absolutely necessary for the 
winning of the war. No one can strike a 
deadlier blow at the safety of the nation and 
of its forces on the other side than by inter- 
fering with or obstructing the shipbuilding 
program. 

All the other unions engaged in this indis- 



22 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

pensable work have agreed to abide by the 
decisions of the Shipbuilding Wage Adjust- 
ment Board. That Board has dealt fairly and 
liberally with all who have resorted to it. I 
must say to you very frankly that it is your 
duty to leave to it the solution of your present 
difficulties with your employers and to advise 
the men whom you represent to return at 
once to work, pending the decision. No body 
of men have the moral right in the present 
circumstances of the nation to strike Until 
every method of adjustment has been tried to 
the limit. If you do not act upon this prin- 
ciple, you are undoubtedly giving aid and 
comfort to the enemy, whatever may be your 
own conscious purpose. 

I do not see that anything will be gained 
by my seeing you personally until you have 
accepted and acted upon that principle. It 
is the duty of the Government to see that the 
best possible conditions of labor are main- 
tained, as it is also its duty to see to it that 
there is no lawless and conscienceless profiteer- 
ing, and that duty the Government has ac- 
cepted and will perform. Will you co-operate 
or will you obstruct? 

Woodrow Wilson. 



IV 

A PLEDGE OF HELP TO RUSSIA 
(March u, igi8) 

May I not take advantage of the meeting 
of the Congress of the Soviets to express the 
sincere sympathy which the people of the 
United States feel for the Russian people at 
this moment when the German power has been 
thrust in to interrupt and turn back the whole 
struggle for freedom and substitute the wishes 
of Germany for the purpose of the people of 
Russia? 

Although the Government of the United 
States is, unhappily, not now in a position 
to render the direct and effective aid it 
would wish to render, I beg to assure the 
people of Russia through the Congress that 
it will avail itself of every opportunity to 
secure for Russia once more complete sov- 
ereignty and independence in her own af- 
fairs and full restoration to her great rdle 
in the life of Europe and the modern 
world. 

3 



24 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

The whole heart of the people of the United 
States is with the people of Russia in the at- 
tempt to free themselves forever from auto- 
cratic government and become the masters of 
their own life. 



FORCE TO THE UTMOST, FOR RIGHT 
(April 6, 1 918) 

At Baltimore, on the occasion of the opening 
of the Third Liberty Loan Campaign, the Presi- 
dent spoke as follows: 

Fellow-Citizens, — This is the anniversary 
of our acceptance of Germany's challenge to 
fight for our right to live and be free, and for 
the sacred rights of free men everywhere. The 
nation is awake. There is no need to call to it. 
We know what the war must cost, our utmost 
sacrifice, the lives of our fittest men, and, if 
need be, all that we possess. The loan we are 
met to discuss is one of the least parts of what 
we are called upon to give and to do, though 
in itself imperative. The people of the whole 
country are alive to the necessity of it, and are 
ready to lend to the utmost, even where it in- 
volves a sharp skimping and daily sacrifice to 
lend out of meager earnings. They will look 
with reprobation and contempt upon those 
who can and will not, upon those who demand 
a higher rate of interest, upon those who think 
of it as a mere commercial transaction. I 



26 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

have not come, therefore, to urge the loan. 
I have come only to give you, if I can, a more 
vivid conception of what it is for. 

THE CAUSE WE FIGHT FOR 

The reasons for this great war, the reason 
why it had to come, the need to fight it 
through, and the issues that hang upon its 
outcome, are more clearly disclosed now than 
ever before. It is easy to see just what this 
particular loan means because the cause we 
are fighting for stands more sharply revealed 
than at any previous crisis of the momentous 
struggle. The man who knows least can now 
see plainly how the cause of justice stands and 
what the imperishable thing is he is asked to 
invest in. Men in America may be more sure 
than they ever were before that the cause is 
their own, and that, if it should be lost, their 
own great nation's place and mission in the 
world would be lost with it. 

I call you to witness, my fellow-countrymen, 
that at no stage of this terrible business have 
I judged the purposes of Germany intem- 
perately. I should be ashamed in the pres- 
ence of affairs so grave, so fraught with the 
destinies of mankind throughout all the world, 
to speak with truculence, to use the weak lan- 
guage of hatred or vindictive purpose. We 
must judge as we would be judged. I have 
sought to learn the objects Germany has in 



FORCE TO THE UTMOST 27 

this war from the mouths of her own spokes- 
men, and to deal as frankly with them as I 
wished them to deal with me. I have laid 
bare our own ideals, our own purposes, without 
reserve or doubtful phrase, and have asked 
them to say as plainly what it is that they seek. 

We have ourselves proposed no injustice, 
no aggression. We are ready, whenever the 
final reckoning is made, to be just to the Ger- 
man people, deal fairly with the German power, 
as with all others. There can be no difference 
between peoples in the final judgment, if it is 
indeed to be a righteous judgment. To pro- 
pose anything but justice, even-handed and 
dispassionate justice, to Germany at any time, 
whatever the outcome of the war, would be to 
renounce and dishonor our own cause. For we 
ask nothing that we are not willing to accord. 

It has been with this thought that I have 
sought to learn from those who spoke for Ger- 
many whether it was justice or dominion and 
the execution of their own will upon the other 
nations of the world that the German leaders 
were seeking. They have answered, answered 
in unmistakable terms. They have avowed 
that it was not justice, but dominion and the 
unhindered execution of their own will. 

Germany's real rulers 

The avowal has not come from Germany's 
statesmen. It has come from her military 



28 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

leaders, who are her real rulers. Her states- 
men have said that they wished peace, and 
were ready to discuss its terms whenever their 
opponents were willing to sit down at the con- 
ference table with them. Her present Chancel- 
lor has said — in indefinite and uncertain terms, 
indeed, and in phrases that often seem to deny 
their own meaning, but with as much plain- 
ness as he thought prudent — that he believed 
that peace should be based upon the prin- 
ciples which we had declared would be our own 
in the final settlement. At Brest- Litovsk her 
civilian delegates spoke in similar terms ; pro- 
fessed their desire to conclude a fair peace and 
accord to the peoples with whose fortunes they 
were dealing the right to choose their own 
allegiances. But action accompanied and fol- 
lowed the profession. Their military masters, 
the men who act for Germany and exhibit her 
purpose in execution, proclaimed a very dif- 
ferent conclusion. We cannot mistake what 
they have done — in Russia, in Finland, in the 
Ukraine, in .Rumania. The real test of their 
justice and fair play has come. From this we 
may judge the rest. They are enjoying in Rus- 
sia a cheap triumph in which no brave or gal- 
lant nation can long take pride. A great peo- 
ple, helpless by their own act, lies for the time 
at their mercy. Their fair professions are for- 
gotten. They nowhere set up justice, but 
everywhere impose their power and exploit 



FORCE TO THE UTMOST 29 

everything for their own use and aggrandize- 
ment; and the peoples of conquered provinces 
are invited to be free under their dominion! 

THE AIM OF KULTUR 

Are we not justified in believing that they 
would do the same things at their western front 
if they were not there face to face with armies 
whom even their countless divisions cannot 
overcome? If, when they have felt their check 
to be final, they should propose favorable and 
equitable terms with regard to Belgium and 
France and Italy, could they blame us if we 
concluded that they did so only to assure 
themselves of a free hand in Russia and the 
East? 

Their purpose is undoubtedly to make all 
the Slavic peoples, all the free and ambitious 
nations of the Baltic peninsula, all the lands 
that Turkey has dominated and misruled, sub- 
ject to their will and ambition, and build upon 
that dominion an empire of force upon which 
they fancy that they can then erect an em- 
pire of gain and commercial supremacy — an 
empire as hostile to the Americas as to the 
Europe which it will overawe — an empire 
which will ultimately master Persia, India, and 
the peoples of the Far East. In such a pro- 
gram our ideals, the ideals of justice and 
humanity and liberty, the principle of the free 
self-determination of nations upon which all 



30 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

the modern world insists, can play no part. 
They are rejected for the ideals of power, for 
the principle that the strong must rule the 
weak, that trade must follow the flag, whether 
those to whom it is taken welcome it or not, 
that the peoples of the world are to be made 
subject to the patronage and overlordship of 
those who have the power to enforce it. 

That program once carried out, America 
and all who care or dare to stand with her must 
arm and prepare themselves to contest the 
mastery of the world, a mastery in which the 
rights of common men, the rights of women 
and of all who are weak, must for the time 
being be trodden under foot and disregarded, 
and the old, age-long struggle for freedom and 
right begin again at its beginning. Everything 
that America has lived for and loved and grown 
great to vindicate and bring to a glorious reali- 
zation will have fallen in utter ruin and the 
gates of mercy once more pitilessly shut upon 
mankind ! 

The thing is preposterous and impossible; 
and yet is not that what the whole course and 
action of the German armies has meant wher- 
ever they have moved ? I do not wish, even in 
this moment of utter disillusionment, to judge 
harshly or unrighteously. I judge only what 
the German arms have accomplished with un- 
pitying thoroughness throughout every fair 
region they have touched. 



FORCE TO THE UTMOST 31 

What, then, are we to do? For myself, I am 
ready, ready still, ready even now, to discuss 
a fair and just and honest peace at any time 
that it is sincerely purposed — a peace in which 
the strong and the weak shall fare alike. But 
the answer, when I proposed such a peace, 
came from the German commanders in Rus- 
sia, and I cannot mistake the meaning of the 
answer. 

FORCE, FORCE TO THE UTMOST 

I accept the challenge. I know that you 
accept it. All the world shall know that you 
accept it. It shall appear in the utter sacrifice 
and self-forgetfulness with which we shall give 
all that we love and all that we have to redeem 
the world and make it fit for free men like 
ourselves to live in. This now is the meaning 
of all that we do. Let everything that we say, 
my fellow-countrymen, everything that we 
henceforth plan and accomplish, ring true to 
this response till the majesty and might of our 
concerted power shall fill the thought and ut- 
terly defeat the force of those who flout and 
misprize what we honor and hold dear. Ger- 
many has once more said that force, and force 
alone, shall decide whether justice and peace 
shall reign in the affairs of men, whether 
Right as America conceives it or Dominion as 
she conceives it shall determine the destinies 
of mankind. There is, therefore, but one re- 



32 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

sponse possible from us: Force, Force to the 
utmost, Force without stint or limit, the 
righteous and triumphant Force which shall 
make Right the law of the world, and cast 
every selfish dominion down in the dust. 



VI 



THE BURDEN OF WAR TAXATION 

(Address to the Congress, May 27, iqi8) 

Gentlemen of the Congress, — It is with 
unaffected reluctance that I come to ask you 
to prolong your session long enough to pro- 
vide more adequate resources for the Treas- 
ury for the conduct of the war. I have 
reason to appreciate as fully as you do how- 
arduous the session has been. Your labors 
have been severe and protracted. You 
have passed a long series of measures which 
required the debate of many doubtful ques- 
tions of judgment, and many exceedingly 
difficult questions of principle, as well as of 
practice. The summer is upon us in which 
labor and counsel are twice arduous, and are 
constantly apt to be impaired by lassitude 
and fatigue. The elections are at hand, and 
we ought as soon as possible to go and render 
an intimate account of our trusteeship to 
the people who delegated us to act for them 
in the weighty and anxious matters that 
crowd upon us in these days of critical choice 



34 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

and action. But we dare not go to the elec- 
tions until we have done our duty to the full. 
These are days when duty stands stark and 
naked, and even with closed eyes we know 
it is there. Excuses are unavailing. We 
have either done our duty or we have not. 
The fact will be as gross and plain as the duty 
itself. In such a case lassitude and fatigue 
seem negligible enough. The facts are tonic 
and suffice to freshen the labor. 

WHAT ARE THE FACTS ? 

And the facts are these : Additional reven- 
ues must manifestly be provided for. It 
would be a most unsound policy to raise too 
large a proportion of them by loan, and it is 
evident that the four billions now provided 
for by taxation will not of themselves sus- 
tain the greatly enlarged budget to which 
we must immediately look forward. We 
cannot in fairness wait until the end of the 
fiscal year is at hand to apprise our people 
of the taxes they must pay on their earnings 
of the present calendar year, whose account- 
ings and expenditures will then be closed. 
We cannot get increased taxes unless the coun- 
try knows what they are to be and practises 
the necessary economy to make them avail- 
able. Definiteness, early definiteness, as to 
what its tasks are to be is absolutely necessary 
for the successful administration of the Treas- 



THE BURDEN OF WAR TAXATION 35 

ury. It cannot frame fair and workable 
regulations in haste, and it must frame its 
regulations in haste if it is not to know its 
exact task until the very eve of its performance. 
The present tax laws are marred, moreover, 
by inequities which ought to be remedied. 
Indisputable facts, every one, and we cannot 
alter or blink them. To state them is argu- 
ment enough. 

DANGERS OP INFLATION 

And yet perhaps you will permit me to 
dwell for a moment upon the situation they 
disclose. Enormous loans freely spent in 
the stimulation of industry of almost every 
sort produce inflations and extravagances 
which presently make the whole economic 
structure questionable and insecure, and the 
very basis of credit is cut away. Only fair, 
equitably distributed taxation of the widest 
incidence and drawing chiefly from the sources 
which would be likely to demoralize credit 
by their very abundance can prevent infla- 
tion and keep our industrial system free of 
speculation and waste. We shall naturally 
turn, therefore, I suppose, to war profits 
and incomes and luxuries for the additional 
taxes. But the war profits and incomes up- 
on which the increased taxes will be levied 
will be the profits and incomes of the calendar 
year 191 8. It would be manifestly unfair 



36 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

to wait until the early months of 19 19 to say 
what they are to be. It might be difficult, 
I should imagine, to run the mill with water 
that had already gone over the wheel. 

Moreover, taxes of that sort will not be 
paid until the June of the next year, and the 
Treasury must anticipate them. It must 
use the money they are to produce before it 
is due. It must sell short-time certificates of 
indebtedness. In the autumn a much larger 
sale of long-time bonds must be effected 
than has yet been attempted. What are the 
bankers to think of the certificates if they do 
not certainly know where the money is to 
come from which is to take them up? And 
how are investors to approach the purchase 
of bonds with any sort of confidence or knowl- 
edge of their own affairs if they do not know 
what taxes they are to pay and what econo- 
mies and adjustments of their business they 
must effect? I cannot assure the country 
of a successful administration of the Treas- 
ury in 1918 if the question of further taxation 
is to be left undecided until 19 19. 

AT THE CRISIS OF THE WAR 

The consideration that dominates every 
other now, and makes every other seem 
trivial and negligible, is the winning of the war. 
We are not only in the midst of the war, we 
are at the very peak and crisis of it. Hun- 



THE BURDEN OF WAR TAXATION 37 

dreds and thousands of our men, carrying 
our hearts with them and our fortunes, are in 
the field, and ships are crowding faster and 
faster to the ports of France and England 
with regiment after regiment, thousand after 
thousand, to join them until the enemy shall 
be beaten and brought to reckoning with man- 
kind. There can be no pause or intermission. 
The great enterprise must, on the contrary, 
be pushed with greater and greater energy. 
The volume of our might must steadily and 
rapidly be augmented until there can be no 
question of resisting it. 

If that is to be accomplished, gentlemen, 
money must sustain it to the utmost. Our 
financial program must no more be left in 
doubt or suffered to lag than our ordnance 
program or our ship program or our muni- 
tions program, or our program for making 
millions of men ready. These others are not 
programs, indeed, but mere plans upon paper, 
unless there is to be an unquestionable supply 
of money. 

POLITICS IS ADJOURNED 

That is the situation, and it is the situa- 
tion which creates the duty, no choice or 
preference of ours. There is only one way to 
meet that duty. We must meet it without 
selfishness or fear of consequences. Politics 
is adjourned. The elections will go to those 



38 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

who think least of it : to those who go to the 
constituencies without explanations or ex- 
cuses, with a plain record of duty faithfully 
and disinterestedly performed, I, for one, am 
always confident that the people of this coun- 
try will give a just verdict upon the service 
of the men who act for them when the facts 
are such that no man can disguise or conceal 
them. There is no danger of deceit now. 
An intense and pitiless light beats upon every 
man and every action in this tragic blot of 
war that is now upon the state. If lobbyists 
hurry to Washington to attempt to turn what 
you do in the matter of taxation to their 
protection or advantage, the light will beat 
also upon them. There is abundant fuel for 
the light in the records of the Treasury with re- 
gard to profits of every sort. The profiteer- 
ing that cannot be got at by the restraints of 
conscience and love of country can be got at 
by taxation. There is such profiteering now, 
and the information with regard to it is avail- 
able and indisputable. 

Having finished the reading of his prepared 
address, the President paused, laid his hand 
over his manuscript, and then added the fol- 
lowing words, speaking extemporaneously: 

May I add just this word, gentlemen — 
just as I was leaving the White House I was 



THE BURDEN OF WAR TAXATION 39 

told that the expected drive on the west 
front had apparently been begun. You ap- 
parently realize how that solemnized my 
feeling as I came to you, and how it seemed to 
strengthen the purpose which I have tried to 
express in these lines. 

I have admired the work of this session. 
The way in which the two Houses of Congress 
have co-operated with the Executive has been 
generous and admirable, and it is not in any 
spirit of suggesting duty neglected, but only 
to remind you of the common cause and the 
common obligations that I have ventured to 
come to you to-day. 

I am advising you to act upon this matter 
of taxation now, gentlemen, not because I 
do not know that you can see and interpret 
the facts and the duty they impose just as well 
and with as clear a perception of the obli- 
gations involved as I can, but because there 
is a certain solemn satisfaction in sharing 
with you the responsibilities of such a time. 
The world never stood in such case before. 
Men never before had so clear or so moving 
a vision of duty. I know that you will be- 
grudge the work to be done here by us no more 
than the men begrudge us theirs who lie in 
the trenches and sally forth to their death. 
There is a stimulating comradeship knitting 
us all together. And this task to which I 
invite your immediate consideration will be 



4 o GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

performed under favorable influences if we 
will look to what the country is thinking and 
expecting and care nothing at all for what 
is being said and believed in the lobbies of 
Washington hotels, where the atmosphere 
seems to make it possible to believe what is 
believed nowhere else. 

PEOPLE UNITED FOR SACRIFICE 

Have you not felt the spirit of the nation 
rise and its thought become a single and 
common thought since these eventful days 
came in which we have been sending our boys 
to the other side? I think you must read 
that thought, as I do, to mean this, that the 
people of this country are not only united in 
the resolute purpose to win this war, but are 
ready and willing to bear any burden and 
undergo any sacrifice that it may be necessary 
for them to bear in order to win it. We need 
not be afraid to tax them, if we lay taxes 
justly. They know that the war must be 
paid for and that it is they who must pay for 
it, and if the burden is justly distributed and 
the sacrifice made a common sacrifice, from 
which none escapes who can bear it at all, 
they will carry it cheerfully and with a sort 
of solemn pride. I have always been proud 
to be an American, and was never more proud 
than now, when all that we have said and 
all that we have foreseen about our people is 



THE BURDEN OF WAR TAXATION 41 

coming true. The great days have come when 
the only thing that they ask for or admire is 
duty greatly and adequately done; when their 
only wish for America is that she may share 
the freedom she enjoys; when a great, com- 
pelling sympathy wells up in their hearts for 
men everywhere who suffer and are oppressed, 
and when they see at last the high uses for 
which their wealth has been piled up and 
their mighty power accumulated, and counting 
neither blood nor treasure, now that their 
final day of opportunity has come, rejoice 
to spend and to be spent through a long 
night of suffering and terror, in order that 
they and men everywhere may see the dawn 
of a day of righteousness and justice and 
peace. Shall we grow weary when they bid 
us act? 



VII 

INDEPENDENCE DAY ADDRESS 
{July 4, 1918) 

At an Independence Day gathering on the 
lawns of Mount Vernon, in his address to a 
group of Government officials and diplomats 
of the Allied nations, the President spoke as 
follows: 

Gentlemen of the Diplomatic Corps and 
My Fellow-citizens, — I am happy to draw 
apart with you to this quiet place of old 
counsel in order to speak a little of the mean- 
ing of this day of our nation's independence. 
The place seems very still and remote. It 
is as serene and untouched by the hurry of 
the world as it was in those great days long 
ago when General Washington was here and 
held leisurely conference with the men who 
were to be associated with him in the creation 
of a nation. From these gentle slopes they 
looked out upon the world and saw it whole, 
saw it with the light of the future upon it, 
saw it with modern eyes that turned away 



INDEPENDENCE DAY ADDRESS 43 

from a past which men of liberated spirits 
could no longer endure. It is for that reason 
that we cannot feel even here, in the immediate 
presence of this sacred tomb, that this is a 
place of death. It was a place of achieve- 
ment. A great promise that was meant for 
all mankind was here given plan and reality. 
The associations by which we are here sur- 
rounded are the inspiriting associations of that 
noble death which is only a glorious con- 
summation. From this green hillside we also 
ought to be able to see with comprehending 
eyes the world that lies around us and con- 
ceive anew the purpose that must set men 
free. 

SPEAKING FOR A PEOPLE 

It is significant — significant of their own 
character and purpose and of the influences 
they were setting afoot — that Washington 
and his associates, like the barons at Runny- 
mede, spoke and acted, not for a class, but 
for a people. It has been left for us to see 
to it that it shall be understood that they 
spoke and acted, not for a single people only, 
but for all mankind. They were thinking, 
not of themselves and of the material interests 
which centered in the little groups of land- 
holders and merchants and men of affairs with 
whom they were accustomed to act, in Vir- 
ginia and the colonies to the north and south 



44 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

of her, but of a people which wished to be done 
with classes and special interests and the au- 
thority of men whom they had not them- 
selves chosen to rule over them. They en- 
tertained no private purpose, desired no 
peculiar privilege. They were consciously 
planning that men of every class should be 
free and America a place to which men out of 
every nation might resort who wished to share 
with them the rights and privileges of free 
men. 

And we take our cue from them — do we 
not? We intend what they intended. We 
here in America believe our participation in 
this present war to be only the fruitage of 
what they planted. Our case differs from 
theirs only in this, that it is our inestimable 
privilege to concert with men out of every 
nation what shall make not only the liberties 
of America secure, but the liberties of every 
other people as well. We are happy in the 
thought that we are permitted to do what 
they would have done had they been in our 
place. There must now be settled, once for 
all, what was settled for America in the great 
age upon whose inspiration we draw to-day. 
This is surely a fitting place from which calmly 
to look out upon our task, that we may 
fortify our spirits for its accomplishment. 
And this is the appropriate place from which 
to avow, alike to the friends who look on and 



INDEPENDENCE DAY ADDRESS 45 

to the friends with whom we have the happi- 
ness to be associated in action, the faith and 
purpose with which we act. 

CONCEPTION OF THE GREAT STRUGGLE 

This, then, is our conception of the great 
struggle in which we are engaged. The 
plot is written plain upon every scene and 
every act of the supreme tragedy. On the 
one hand stand the peoples of the world — 
not only the peoples actually engaged, but 
many others also who suffer under mastery, 
but cannot act; peoples of many races and in 
every part of the world — the people of stricken 
Russia still, among the rest, though they are 
for the moment unorganized and helpless. 
Opposed to them, masters of many armies, 
stand an isolated, friendless group of Govern- 
ments who speak no common purpose, but only 
selfish ambitions of their own by which none 
can profit but themselves, and whose peo- 
ples are fuel in their hands; Governments 
which fear their people and yet are for the time 
their sovereign lords, making every choice 
for them and disposing of their lives and fort- 
unes as they will, as well as of the lives and 
fortunes of every people who fall under their 
power — Governments clothed with the strange 
trappings and the primitive authority of an 
age that is altogether alien and hostile to our 
own. The past and the present are in deadly 



46 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

grapple, and the peoples of the world are be- 
ing done to death between them. 

THE ISSUE DEFINED 

There can be but one issue. The settle- 
ment must be final. There can be no com- 
promise. No half-way decision would be 
tolerable. No half-way decision is conceiv- 
able. These are the ends for which the as- 
sociated peoples of the world are fighting and 
which must be conceded them before there 
can be peace. 

I. The destruction of every arbitrary power 
anywhere that can separately, secretly, and 
of its single choice disturb the peace of the 
world ; or, if it cannot be presently destroyed, 
at the least its reduction to virtual impotence. 

II. The settlement of every question, 
whether of territory, of sovereignty, of eco- 
nomic arrangement, or of political relationship, 
upon the basis of the free acceptance of that 
settlement by the people immediately con- 
cerned, and not upon the basis of the material 
interest or advantage of any other nation or 
people which may desire a different settlement 
for the sake of its own exterior influence or 
mastery. 

III. The consent of all nations to be 
governed in their conduct toward each other 
by the same principles of honor and of respect 
for the common law of civilized society that 



INDEPENDENCE DAY ADDRESS 47 

govern the individual citizens of all modern 
states in their relations with one another; to 
the end that all promises and covenants may 
be sacredly observed, no private plots or con- 
spiracies hatched, no selfish injuries wrought 
with impunity, and a mutual trust established 
upon the handsome foundation of a mutual 
respect for right. 

IV. The establishment of an organization 
of peace which shall make it certain that the 
combined power of free nations will check 
every invasion of right and serve to make peace 
and justice the more secure by affording a 
definite tribunal of opinion to which all must 
submit and by which every international 
readjustment that cannot be amicably agreed 
upon by the peoples directly concerned shall 
be sanctioned. 

THE REIGN OF LAW 

These great objects can be put into a single 
sentence. What we seek is the reign of law, 
based upon the consent of the governed and 
sustained by the organized opinion of man- 
kind. These great ends cannot be achieved 
by debating and seeking to reconcile and ac- 
commodate what statesmen may wish, with 
their projects for balances of power and of 
national opportunity. They can be realized 
only by determination of what the think- 
ing peoples of the world desire, with their 



48 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

longing hope for justice and for social free- 
dom and opportunity. 

I can fancy that the air of this place car- 
ries the accents of such principles with a 
peculiar kindness. Here were started forces 
which the great nation against which they were 
primarily directed at first regarded as a revolt 
against its rightful authority, but which it 
has long since seen to have been a step in the 
liberation of its own people, as well as of 
the people of the United States; and I stand 
here now to speak — speak proudly and with 
confident hope — of the spread of this revolt, 
this liberation to the great stage of the world 
itself! The blinded rulers of Prussia have 
aroused forces they knew little of — forces 
which, once roused, can never be crushed to 
earth again; for they have at their heart an 
inspiration and a purpose which are deathless 
and of the very stuff of triumph ! 



VIII 

THE MOB SPIRIT DENOUNCED 
(Message to the American People, July 26, 191 8) 

My Fellow-countrymen, — I take the lib- 
erty of addressing you upon a subject which 
so vitally affects the honor of the nation 
and the very character and integrity of 
our institutions that I trust you will 
think me justified in speaking very plainly 
about it. 

I allude to the mob spirit which has recently 
here and there very frequently shown its head 
among us, not in any single region, but in 
many and widely separated parts of the coun- 
try. There have been many lynchings, and 
every one of them has been a blow at the heart 
of ordered law and humane justice. No man 
who loves America, no man who really cares 
for her fame and honor and character, or who 
is truly loyal to her institutions, can justify 
mob action while the courts of justice are 
open and the governments of the states and 
the nation are ready and able to do their duty. 
We are at this very moment fighting lawless 



So GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

passion . Germany has outlawed herself among 
the nations because she has disregarded the 
sacred obligations of law and has made 
lynchers of her armies. Lynchers emulate 
her disgraceful example. I, for my part, am 
anxious to see every community in America 
rise above that level, with pride and a fixed 
resolution which no man or set of men can 
afford to despise. 

A DISGRACE TO DEMOCRACY 

We proudly claim to be the champions of 
democracy. If we really are, in deed and 
truth, let us see to it that we do not discredit 
our own. I say plainly that every American 
who takes part in the action of a mob, or 
gives any sort of countenance, is no true son 
of this great democracy, but its betrayer, and 
does more to discredit her by that single 
disloyalty to her standards of law and right 
than the words of her statesmen or the sacrifices 
of her heroic boys in the trenches can do to 
make suffering peoples believe her to be their 
savior. How shall we commend democracy 
to the acceptance of other peoples if we 
disgrace our own by proving that it is, after 
all, no protection to the weak? Every mob 
contributes to German lies about the United 
States, what her most gifted liars cannot im- 
prove upon by the way of calumny. They 
can at least say that such things cannot happen 



THE MOB SPIRIT DENOUNCED 5 i 

in Germany except in times of revolution, 
when law is swept away! 

ENDING THE EVIL 

I therefore very earnestly and solemnly beg 
that the Governors of all the states, the law 
officers of every community, and, above all, 
the men and women of every community in 
the United States, all who revere America and 
wish to keep her name without stain or re- 
proach, will co-operate — not passively merely, 
but actively and watchfully — to make an end 
of this disgraceful evil. It cannot live where 
the community does not countenance it. 

I have called upon the nation to put its 
great energy into this war, and it has responded 
— responded with a spirit and a genius for 
action that has thrilled the world. I now call 
upon it, upon its men and women everywhere, 
to see to it that its laws are kept inviolate, 
its fame untarnished. Let us show our utter 
contempt for the things that have made this 
war hideous among the wars of history by 
showing how those who love liberty and right 
and justice, and are willing to lay down their 
lives for them upon foreign fields, stand ready 
also to illustrate to all mankind their loyalty 
to all things at home which they wish to see 
established everywhere as a blessing and pro- 
tection to the peoples who have never known 
the privilege of liberty and self-government. 



52 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

I can never accept any man as a champion 
of liberty, either for ourselves or for the world, 
who does not reverence and obey the laws of 
our own beloved land, whose laws we ourselves 
have made. He has adopted the standards 
of the enemies of his cotuitry, whom he affects 
to despise. 



IX 



THE SECOND CONSCRIPTION PROCLAMATION 
(August 31, 1918) 

Immediately after signing the Man-power 
Act authorizing the registration for selective draft 
of all men in the United States between the ages 
of eighteen and forty-five, inclusive, who had not 
already registered or who were not in the military 
or naval service, the President issued a proclama- 
tion, in which he appointed September 12, 1918, 
as the day for this enrolment After citing the 
provisions of the new law and stating the regula- 
tions for the registration, the President's procla- 
mation continued as follows: 

Fifteen months ago the men of the country 
from twenty-one to thirty years of age regis- 
tered. Three months ago, and again last 
month, those who had just reached the age of 
twenty-one were added. It now remains to 
include all men between the ages of eighteen 
and forty-five. 

This is not a new policy. A century and a 
quarter ago it was deliberately ordained by 
those who were then responsible for the safety 



54 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

and defense of the nation that the duty of 
military service should rest upon all able- 
bodied men between the ages of eighteen and 
forty-five. We now accept and fulfil the ob- 
ligation which they established, an obligation 
expressed in our national statutes from that 
time until now. We solemnly purpose a de- 
cisive victory of arms, and deliberately to 
devote the larger part of the military man- 
power of the nation to the accomplishment of 
that purpose. 

The younger men have from the first been 
ready to go. They have furnished voluntary 
enlistments out of all proportion to their num- 
bers. Our military authorities regard them as 
having the highest combatant qualities. Their 
youthful enthusiasm, their virile eagerness, 
their gallant spirit of daring, make them the 
admiration of all who see them in action. 
They covet not only the distinction of serving 
in this great war, but also the inspiring mem- 
ories which hundreds of thousands of them 
will cherish through the years to come, of a 
great day and a great service for their country 
and for mankind. 

By the men of the older group now called 
on, the opportunity now opened to them will 
be accepted with the calm resolution of those 
who realize to the full the deep and solemn 
significance of what they do. Having made a 
place for themselves in their respective com- 



THE SECOND CONSCRIPTION 55 

munities, having assumed at home the graver 
responsibilities of life in many spheres, looking 
back upon honorable records in civil and in- 
dustrial life, they will realize as perhaps no 
others could how entirely their own fortunes 
and the fortunes of all whom they love are put 
at stake in this war for right, and will know 
that the very records they have made render 
this new duty the commanding duty of their 
lives. They know how surely this is the na- 
tion's war, how imperatively it demands the 
mobilization and massing of all our resources 
of every kind. They will regard this call as 
the supreme call of their day, and will answer 
it accordingly. 

Only a portion of those who register will be 
called upon to bear arms. Those who are not 
physically fit will be excused, those exempted 
by alien allegiance, those who should not be 
relieved of their present responsibilities, above 
all, those who cannot be spared from the civil 
and industrial tasks at home upon which the 
success of our armies depends as much as upon 
the fighting at the front. But all must be 
registered in order that the selection for 
military service may be made intelligently 
and with full information. This will be our 
final demonstration of loyalty, democracy, and 
the will to win, our solemn notice to all the 
world that we stand absolutely together in a 
common resolution and purpose. It is the 



56 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

call to duty to which every true man in the 
country will respond with pride and with the 
consciousness that in doing so he plays his 
part in vindication of a great cause at whose 
summons every true heart offers its supreme 
service. 



X 



THE ANSWER TO AUSTRIA'S REQUEST FOR A 

CONFERENCE 

(September 16, 1918) 

Robert Lansing, Secretary of State of the 
United States of America, upon receiving the 
official text of the Austrian peace note, issued the 
following formal statement: 

I am authorized by the President to state 
that the following will be the reply of this 
Government to the Austro-Hungarian note 
proposing an unofficial conference of bel- 
ligerents: 

The Government of the United States feels that there 
is only one reply which it can make to the suggestion 
of the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Government. It has 
repeatedly and with entire candor stated the terms 
upon which the United States would consider peace, 
and can and will entertain no proposal for a conference 
upon a matter concerning which it has made its position 
and purpose so plain. 



XI 



IMPARTIAL JUSTICE THE PRICE OF PEACE 
(September 27, 1918) 

On the occasion of the opening of the cam- 
paign for the Fourth Liberty Loan, President 
Wilson delivered the following address in the 
Metropolitan Opera House in New York: 

My Fellow-citizens, — I am not here to 
promote the loan. That will be done — ably 
and enthusiastically done — by the hundreds 
of thousands of loyal and tireless men and 
women who have undertaken to present it to 
you and to our fellow-citizens throughout 
the country; and I have not the least doubt 
of their complete success; for I know their 
spirit and the spirit of the country. My 
confidence is confirmed, too, by the thought- 
ful and experienced co-operation of the bankers 
here and everywhere, who are lending their 
invaluable aid and guidance. I have come, 
rather, to seek an opportunity to present to 
you some thoughts which I trust will serve 
to give you, in perhaps fuller measure than 
before, a vivid sense of the great issues in- 



IMPARTIAL JUSTICE 59 

volved, in order that you may appreciate and 
accept with added enthusiasm the grave signif- 
icance of the duty of supporting the Govern- 
ment by your men and your means to the 
utmost point of sacrifice and self-denial. No 
man or woman who has really taken in what 
this war means can hesitate to give to the 
very limit of what he or she has; and it is 
my mission here to-night to try to make it clear 
once more what the war really means. You 
will need no other stimulation or reminder of 
your duty. 

WHAT WE MEAN TO ACCOMPLISH 

At every turn of the war we gain a fresh 
consciousness of what we mean to accomplish 
by it. When our hope and expectation are 
most excited we think more definitely than 
before of the issues that hang upon it and of 
the purposes which must be realized by means 
of it. For it has positive and well-defined 
purposes which we did not determine and 
which we cannot alter. No statesman or 
assembly can alter them. They have arisen 
out of the very nature and circumstances of 
the war. The most that statesmen or assem- 
blies can do is to carry them out or be false 
to them. They were perhaps not clear at 
the outset; but they are clear now. The war 
has lasted more than four years and the whole 
world has been drawn into it. The common 



60 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

will of mankind has been substituted for the 
particular purposes of individual states. In- 
dividual statesmen may have started the con- 
flict, but neither they nor their opponents 
can stop it as they please. It has become a 
peoples' war, and peoples of all sorts and 
races, of every degree of power and variety of 
fortune, are involved in its sweeping processes 
of change and settlement. We came into it 
when its character had become fully defined 
and it was plain that no action could stand 
apart or be indifferent to its outcome. Its 
challenge drove to the heart of everything 
we cared for and lived for. The voice of the 
war had become clear and gripped our hearts. 
Our brothers from many lands, as well as our 
own murdered dead under the sea, were call- 
ing to us, and we responded, fiercely and of 
course. 

THE ISSUES THAT MUST BE SETTLED 

The air was clear about us. We saw things 
in their full, convincing proportions as they 
were; and we have seen them with steady 
eyes and unchanging comprehension ever 
since. We accepted the issues of the war as 
facts, not as any group of men either here or 
elsewhere had defined them, and we can 
accept no outcome which does not squarely 
meet and settle them. Those issues are 
these: 



IMPARTIAL JUSTICE 61 

Shall the military power of any nation or 
group of nations be suffered to determine the 
fortunes of peoples over whom they have no 
right to rule except the right of force? 

Shall strong nations be free to wrong 
weak nations and make them subject to their 
purpose and interest? 

Shall peoples be ruled and dominated, even 
in their own internal affairs, by arbitrary and 
irresponsible force or by their own will and 
choice? 

Shall there be a common standard of right 
and privilege for all peoples and nations, 
or shall the strong do as they will and the 
weak suffer without redress? 

Shall the assertion of right be haphazard 
and by casual alliance, or shall there be a 
common concert to oblige the observance of 
common rights? 

No man, no group of men, chose these to 
be the issues of the struggle. They are the 
issues of it; and they must be settled — by 
no arrangement or compromise or adjust- 
ment of interests, but definitely and once for 
all and with a full and unequivocal acceptance 
of the principle that the interest of the weakest 
is as sacred as the interest of the strongest. 

This is what we mean when we speak of a 
permanent peace, if we speak sincerely, in- 
telligently, and with a real knowledge and 
comprehension of the matter we deal with. 



62 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

We are all agreed that there can be no 
peace obtained by any kind of bargain or 
compromise with the Governments of the Cen- 
tral Empires, because we have dealt with them 
already and have seen them deal with other 
Governments that were parties to this struggle, 
at Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest. They have 
convinced us that they are without honor and 
do not intend justice. They observe no cove- 
nants, accept no principle but force and then- 
own interest. We cannot "come to terms" 
with them. They have made it impossible. 
The German people must by this time be fully 
aware that we cannot accept the word of those 
who forced this war upon us. We do not 
think the same thoughts or speak the same 
language of agreement. 

NO PEACE BY COMPROMISE 

It is of capital importance that we should 
also be explicitly agreed that no peace shall 
be obtained by any kind of compromise or 
abatement of the principles we have avowed 
as the principles for which we are fighting. 
There should exist no doubt about that. I 
am, therefore, going to take the liberty of 
speaking with the utmost frankness about 
the practical implications that are involved 
in it. 

If it be indeed and in truth the common 
object of the Governments associated against 



IMPARTIAL JUSTICE 63 

Germany and of the nations whom they 
govern, as I believe it to be, to achieve by 
the coming settlements a secure and lasting 
peace, it will be necessary that all who sit down 
at the peace table shall come ready and will- 
ing to pay the price, the only price, that will 
procure it; and ready and willing, also, to 
create in some virile fashion the only in- 
strumentality by which it can be made certain 
that the agreements of the peace will be 
honored and fulfilled. 

That price is impartial justice in every 
item of the settlement, no matter whose in- 
terest is crossed; and not only impartial 
justice, but also the satisfaction of the several 
peoples whose fortunes are dealt with. That 
indispensable instrumentality is a League of 
Nations, formed under covenants that will 
be efficacious. Without such an instrumen- 
tality, by which the peace of the world can 
be guaranteed, peace will rest in part upon 
the word of outlaws, and only upon that word. 
For Germany will have to redeem her char- 
acter, not by what happens at the peace 
table, but by what follows. 

And, as I see it, the constitution of that 
League of Nations and the clear definition of 
its objects must be a part, is in a sense the 
most essential part, of the peace settlement 
itself. It cannot be formed now. If formed 
now, it would be merely a new alliance con- 



64 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

fined to the nations associated against a com- 
mon enemy. It is not likely that it could be 
formed after the settlement. It is neces- 
sary to guarantee the peace; and the peace 
cannot be guaranteed as an afterthought. 
The reason, to speak in plain terms again, 
why it must be guaranteed is that there will 
be parties to the peace whose promises have 
proved untrustworthy, and means must be 
found in connection with the peace settlement 
itself to remove that source of insecurity. 
It would be folly to leave the guarantee to 
the subsequent voluntary action of the Gov- 
ernments we have seen destroy Russia and 
deceive Rumania. 

JUSTICE THAT PLAYS NO FAVORITES 

But these general terms do not disclose the 
whole matter. Some details are needed to 
make them sound less like a thesis and more 
like a practical program. These, then, are 
some of the particulars, and I state them with 
the greater confidence because I can state 
them authoritatively as representing this 
Government's interpretation of its own duty 
with regard to peace: 

First, the impartial justice meted out must 
involve no discrimination between those to 
whom we wish to be just and those to whom 
we do not wish to be just. It must be a 
justice that plays no favorites and knows no 



IMPARTIAL JUSTICE 65 

standard but the equal rights of the several 
peoples concerned; 

Second, no special or separate interest of any 
single nation or any group of nations can be 
made the basis of any part of the settlement 
which is not consistent with the common 
interest of all; 

Third, there can be no leagues or alliances 
or special covenants and understandings 
within the general and common family of the 
League of Nations ; 

Fourth, and more specifically, there can be 
no special, selfish economic combinations 
within the league and no employment of any 
form of economic boycott or exclusion except 
as the power of economic penalty by exclusion 
from the markets of the world may be vested 
in the League of Nations itself as a means of 
discipline and control; 

Fifth, all international agreements and 
treaties of every kind must be made known 
in their entirety to the rest of the world. 

ALLIANCES AND RIVALRIES 

Special alliances and economic rivalries and 
hostilities have been the prolific source in the 
modern world of the plans and passions that 
produce war. It would be an insincere as 
well as an insecure peace that did not exclude 
them in definite and binding terms. 

The confidence with which I venture to 



66 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

speak for our people in these matters does not 
spring from our traditions merely, and the 
well-known principles of international action 
which we have always professed and followed. 
In the same sentence in which I say that the 
United States will enter into no special arrange- 
ments or understandings with particular na- 
tions let me say also that the United States is 
prepared to assume its full share of respon- 
sibility for the maintenance of the common 
covenants and understandings upon which 
peace must henceforth rest. We still read Wash- 
ington's immortal warning against ''entangling 
alliances" with full comprehension and an 
answering purpose. But only special and 
limited alliances entangle; and we recognize 
and accept the duty of a new day in which we 
are permitted to hope for a general alliance 
which will avoid entanglements and clear the 
air of the world for common understandings 
and the maintenance of common rights. 

THE NEED FOR PLAIN SPEAKING 

I have made this analysis of the inter- 
national situation which the war has created, 
not, of course, because I doubted whether the 
leaders of the great nations and peoples with 
whom we are associated were of the same mind 
and entertained a like purpose, but because 
the air every now and again gets darkened by 
mists and groundless doubtings and mis- 



IMPARTIAL JUSTICE 67 

chievous perversions of counsel, and it is nec- 
essary once and again to sweep all the irre- 
sponsible talk about peace intrigues and weak- 
ening morale and doubtful purpose on the part 
of those in authority utterly, and if need be 
unceremoniously, aside and say things in the 
plainest words that can be found, even when 
it is only to say over again what has been said 
before, quite as plainly, if in less unvarnished 
terms. 

As I have said, neither I nor any other man 
in governmental authority created or gave 
form to the issues of this war. I have simply 
responded to them with such vision as I could 
command. But I have responded gladly and 
with a resolution that has grown warmer and 
more confident as the issues have grown clearer 
and clearer. It is now plain that they are 
issues which no man can pervert unless it be 
wilfully. I am bound to fight for them, and 
happy to fight for them as time and circum- 
stance have revealed them to me as to all the 
world. Our enthusiasm for them grows more 
and more irresistible as they stand out in more 
and more vivid and unmistakable outline. 

And the forces that fight for them draw into 
closer and closer array, organize their millions 
into more and more unconquerable might, as 
they become more and more distinct to the 
thought and purpose of the peoples engaged. 
It is the peculiarity of this great war that while 



68 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

statesmen have seemed to cast about for 
definitions of their purpose, and have some- 
times seemed to shift their ground and their 
point of view, the thought of the mass of men, 
whom statesmen are supposed to instruct and 
lead, has grown more and more unclouded, 
more and more certain of what it is that they 
are fighting for. National purposes have fall- 
en more and more into the background and 
the common purpose of enlightened mankind 
has taken their place. The counsels of plain 
men have become on all hands more simple 
and straightforward and more unified than the 
counsels of sophisticated men of affairs, who 
still retain the impression that they are playing 
a game of power and playing for high stakes. 
That is why I have said that this is a peoples' 
war, not a statesmen's. Statesmen must fol- 
low the clarified common thought or be broken. 

WHAT IS THE WORLD SEEKING? 

I take that to be the significance of the fact 
that assemblies and associations of many 
kinds made up of plain workaday people have 
demanded, almost every time they came to- 
gether, and are still demanding, that the lead- 
ers of their Governments declare to them 
plainly what it is, exactly what it is, that they 
are seeking in this war, and what they think the 
items of the final settlement should be. They 
are not yet satisfied with what they have been 



IMPARTIAL JUSTICE 69 

told. They still seem to fear that they are 
getting what they ask for only in statesmen's 
terms — only in the terms of territorial arrange- 
ments and divisions of power, and not in terms 
of broad-visioned justice and mercy and peace 
and the satisfaction of those deep-seated long- 
ings of oppressed and distracted men and 
women and enslaved peoples that seem to them 
the only things worth fighting a war for that 
engulfs the world. Perhaps statesmen have 
not always recognized this changed aspect of 
the whole world of policy and action. Per- 
haps they have not always spoken in direct 
reply to the questions asked because they did 
not know how searching those questions were 
and what sort of answers they demanded. 

AGAIN ATTEMPTING AN ANSWER 

But I, for one, am glad to attempt the 
answer again and again, in the hope that I 
may make it clearer and clearer that my one 
thought is to satisfy those who struggle in the 
ranks and are, perhaps above all others, en- 
titled to a reply whose meaning no one can 
have any excuse for misunderstanding, if he 
understands the language in which it is spoken 
or can get some one to translate it correctly 
into his own. And I believe that the leaders 
of the Governments with which we are asso- 
ciated will speak, as they have occasion, as 
plainly as I have tried to speak. I hope that 



70 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

they will feel free to say whether they think 
that I am in any degree mistaken in my inter- 
pretation of the issues involved or in my pur- 
pose with regard to the means by which a 
satisfactory settlement of those issues may be 
obtained. Unity of purpose and of counsel 
is as imperatively necessary in this war as 
was unity of command in the battle-field; 
and with perfect unity of purpose and counsel 
will come assurance of complete victory. It 
can be had in no other way. " Peace drives" 
can be effectively neutralized and silenced only 
by showing that every victory of the nations 
associated against Germany brings the nations 
nearer the sort of peace which will bring 
security and reassurance to all peoples and 
make the recurrence of another such struggle 
of pitiless force and bloodshed forever impos- 
sible, and that nothing else can. Germany is 
constantly^ intimating the " terms" she will 
accept; and always finds that the world does 
not want terms. It wishes the final triumph 
of justice and fair dealing. 



XII 

ADDRESS TO THE SENATE ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE 
(September jo, 1918) 

Gentlemen of the Senate, — The un- 
usual circumstances of a world war in which 
we stand and are judge in the view not only 
of our own people and our own consciences, 
but also in the view of all nations and people, 
will, I hope, justify in your thought, as it does 
in mine, the message I have come to bring you. 

I regard the concurrence of the Senate in 
the constitutional amendment proposing the 
extension of the suffrage to women as vitally 
essential to the successful prosecution of the 
great war of humanity in which we are en- 
gaged. I have come to urge upon you the 
considerations which have led me to that 
conclusion. It is not only my privilege, it 
is also my duty, to apprise you of every 
circumstance and element involved in this 
momentous struggle which seems to me to 
affect its very processes and its outcome. 
It is my duty to win the war and to ask you 
to remove every obstacle that stands in the 
way of winning it. 



72 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

I had assumed that the Senate would 
concur in the amendment because no dis- 
putable principle is involved, but only a 
question of the method by which the suffrage 
is to be extended to women. There is and can 
be no party issue involved in it. Both of 
our great national parties are pledged, ex- 
plicitly pledged, to equality of suffrage for the 
women of the country. Neither party, there- 
fore, it seems to me, can justify hesitation as 
to the method of obtaining it, can rightfully 
hesitate to substitute Federal initiative for 
state initiative, if the early adoption of this 
measure is necessary to the successful prose- 
cution of the war, and if the method of state 
action proposed in the party platforms of 
1916 is impracticable, within any reasonable 
length of time, if practical at all. And its 
adoption is, in my judgment, clearly nec- 
essary to the successful prosecution of the war 
and the successful realization of the objects 
for which the war is being fought. 

That judgment, I take the liberty of urging 
upon you with solemn earnestness, for rea- 
sons which I shall state very frankly, and which 
I hope will seem as conclusive to you as they 
seem to me. 

THE REASONS FOR UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE 

This is a people's war, and the people's 
thinking constitutes its atmosphere and morale, 



ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE 73 

not the predilections of the drawing-room or 
the political considerations of the caucus. 
If we be indeed Democrats and wish to lead 
the world to democracy, we can ask other 
peoples to accept in proof of our sincerity 
and our ability to lead them whither they 
wish to be led nothing less persuasive and 
convincing than our actions. Our professions 
will not suffice. Verification must be forth- 
coming when verification is asked for. And 
in this case verification is asked for — asked 
for in this particular matter. You ask by 
whom? Not through diplomatic channels, 
not by foreign ministers, not by the intima- 
tions of parliaments. It is asked, for by the 
anxious, expectant, suffering peoples with 
whom we are dealing, and who are willing 
to put their destinies in some measure in our 
hands, if they are sure that we wish the same 
things that they do,. 
jj do not speak my conjecture. It is not 
alone the voices of statesmen and of news- 
papers that reach me, and the voices of foolish 
and intemperate agitators do not reach me 
at all. Through many, many channels I 
have been made aware what the plain, strug- 
gling, workaday folk are thinking, upon whom 
the chief terror and suffering of this tragic war 
falls. They are looking to the great, powerful, 
famous democracy of the West to lead them to 
the new day for which they have so long waited ; 



74 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

and they think, in their logical simplicity, that 
democracy means that women shall play their 
part in affairs alongside men and upon an 
equal footing with them. If we reject meas- 
ures like these in ignorant defiance of what a 
new age has brought forth, of what they have 
seen but we have not, they will cease to believe 
in us, they will cease to follow or to trust us. 
They have seen their own Governments 
accept this interpretation of democracy — 
seen old Governments like that of Great 
Britain, which did not profess to be democratic, 
promise readily and as of course this justice 
to women, though they had before refused it, 
the strange revelations of this war having 
made many things new and plain, to Gov- 
ernments as well as to peoples. 

SHALL WE LEARN THE LESSON? 

Are we alone to refuse to learn the lesson? 
Are we alone to ask and take the utmost 
that our women can give — service and sacri- 
fice of every kind — and still say we do not see 
what title that gives them to stand by our 
sides in the guidance of the affairs of their 
nation and ours? We have made partners of 
the women in this war. Shall we admit 
them only to a partnership of suffering and 
sacrifice and toil, and not to a partnership of 
privilege and right ? This war could not have 
been fought, either by the other nations en- 



ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE 75 

gaged or by America, if it had not been for 
the services of the women — service rendered 
in every sphere — not merely in the fields of 
efforts in which we have been accustomed to 
see them work, but wherever men have worked 
and upon the very skirts and edges of the bat- 
tle itself. We shall not only be distrusted, 
but shall deserve to be distrusted, if we do 
not enfranchise them with the fullest pos- 
sible enfranchisement, as it is now certain 
that the other great free nations will enfran- 
chise them. 

WE CANNOT STAND ALONE 

We cannot isolate our thoughts and action 
in a matter from the thought of the rest of 
the world. We must either conform or de- 
liberately reject what they propose and resign 
the leadership of liberal minds to others. 

The women of America are too noble and 
too intelligent and too devoted to be slackers, 
whether you give or withhold this thing that 
is mere justice, but I know the magic it will 
work in their thoughts and spirits if you give 
it to them. I propose it as I would propose 
to admit soldiers to the* suffrage, the men 
fighting in the field for our liberties, and the 
liberties of the world, were they excluded. 
The tasks of the women lie at the very heart 
of the war, and I know how much stronger 
that heart will beat if you do this just thing 



76 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

and show our women that you trust them as 
much as you in fact and of necessity depend 
upon them. 

Have I said that the passage of this amend- 
ment is a vitally necessary war measure, and 
do you need further proof? Do you stand in 
need of the trust of other peoples and of the 
trust of our own women? Is that trust an 
asset, or is it not? I tell you plainly, as the 
commander-in-chief of our armies and of the 
gallant men in our fleets, as the present spokes- 
man of this people in our dealings with the 
men and women throughout the world who 
are now our partners, as the responsible head 
of a great Government which stands and is 
questioned day by day as to its purposes, its 
principles, its hopes, whether they be service- 
able to men everywhere, or only to itself, 
and who must himself answer these question- 
ings, or be shamed, as the guide and director 
of forces caught in the grip of war and by the 
same token in need of every material and 
spiritual resource this great nation possesses — 
I tell you plainly that this measure which I 
urge upon you is vital to the winning of the 
war and to the energies alike of preparation 
and of battle. 

WOMEN IN OUR COUNSELS 

And not to the winning of the war only. 
It is vital to the right solution of the great 



ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE 77 

problems which we must settle, and settle 
immediately, when the war is over. We shall 
need them in our vision of affairs, as we have 
never needed them before, the sympathy 
and insight and clear moral instinct of the 
women of the world. The problems of that 
time will strike to the roots of many things 
that we have not hitherto questioned, and I 
for one believe that our safety in those ques- 
tioning days, as well as our comprehension of 
matters that touch society to- the quick, 
will depend upon the direct and authorita- 
tive participation of women in our counsels. 
We shall need their moral sense to preserve 
what is right and fine and worthy in our sys- 
tem of life, as well as to discover just what it 
is that ought to be purified and reformed. 
Without their counselings, we shall be only 
half wise. 

That is my case. This is my appeal. 
Many may deny its validity, if they choose, 
but no one can brush aside or answer the ar- 
guments upoAwhich it is based. The exec- 
utive tasks of this war rest upon me. I ask 
that you lighten them and place in my hands 
instruments, spiritual instruments, which I 
do not now possess, which I sorely need, and 
which I have daily to apologize for not being 
able to employ. 



XIII 

A QUESTION FOR THE GERMAN CHANCELLOR 
{October 8, 1918) 

Acknowledging the receipt of a communi- 
cation from the German Government saying that 
it was ready to accept President Wilson's terms 
and asking for an armistice, Robert Lansing, 
Secretary of State of the United States of America, 
handed to Mr. Frederick Oederlin, Charge* 
d y Affaires of Switzerland, ad interim in charge 
of German affairs in the United States, the fol- 
lowing note: 

Department of State, 
Washington, October 8, iqi8. 

Sir, — I have the honor to acknowledge, 
on behalf of the President, your note of Oc- 
tober 6th, inclosing a communication from the 
German Government to the President, and I 
am instructed by the President to request 
you to make the following communication to 
the Imperial German Chancellor: 

"Before making reply to the request of the 
Imperial German Government, and in order 
that that reply shall be as candid and straight- 
forward as the momentous interests involved 



A QUESTION 79 

require, the President of the United States 
deems it necessary to assure himself of the 
exact meaning of the note of the Imperial 
Chancellor. Does the Imperial Chancellor 
mean that the Imperial German Government 
accepts the terms laid down by the President 
in his address to the Congress of the United 
States on the 8th of January last and in sub- 
sequent addresses, and that its object in enter- 
ing into discussions would be only to agree 
upon the practical details of their application ? 

"The President feels bound to say with re- 
gard to the suggestion of an armistice that he 
would not feel at liberty to propose a cessation 
of arms to the Governments with which the 
Government of the United States is associated 
against the Central Powers so long as the armies 
of those Powers are upon their soil. The good 
faith of any discussion would manifestly de- 
pend upon the consent of the Central Powers 
immediately to withdraw their forces every- 
where from invaded territory. 

"The President also feels that he is justified 
in asking whether the Imperial Chancellor 
is speaking merely for the constituted authori- 
ties of the Empire who have so far conducted 
the war. He deems the answer to these ques- 
tions vital from every point of view." 

Accept, sir, the renewed assurances of my 
high consideration. 

Robert Lansing. 



XIV 

THE REPLY TO GERMANY 
{October 14, 1918) 

From the Secretary of State to Mr, Frederick 
Oederlin, Charge" d' Affaires of Switzerland: 

Department of State, 
Washington, October 14, iqi8. 

Sir, — In reply to the communication of 
the German Government, dated the 12th 
inst., which you handed me to-day, I have the 
honor to request you to transmit the fol- 
lowing answer: 

The unqualified acceptance by the present 
German Government and by a large majority 
of the German Reichstag of the terms laid 
down by the President of the United States 
of America in his address to the Congress 
of the United States on the 8th of January, 
1 91 8, and in his subsequent addresses justi- 
fies the President in making a frank and direct 
statememt of his decision with regard to the 
communications of the German Government 
of the 8th and 12th of October, 1918. 



THE REPLY TO GERMANY 81 

It must be clearly understood that the 
process of evacuation and the conditions of 
an armistice are matters which must be left 
to the judgment and advice of the military 
advisers of the Government of the United 
States and the Allied Governments, and the 
President feels it his duty to say that no ar- 
rangement can be accepted by the Govern- 
ment of the United States which does not pro- 
vide absolutely satisfactory safeguards and 
guarantees of the maintenance of the present 
military supremacy of the armies of the United 
States and of the Allies in the field. He feels 
confident that he can safely assume that this 
will also be the judgment and decision of the 
Allied Governments. 

The President feels that it is also his duty 
to add that neither the Government of the 
United States nor, he is quite sure, the Gov- 
ernments with which the Government of the 
United States is associated as a belligerent 
will consent to consider an armistice so long 
as the armed forces of Germany continue the 
illegal and inhumane practices which they per- 
sist in. 

At the very time that the German Govern- 
ment approaches the Government of the 
United States with proposals of peace, its 
submarines are engaged in sinking passenger 
ships at sea, and not the ships alone, but the 
very boats in which their passengers and 



82 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

crews seek to make their way to safety; 
and in their present enforced withdrawal 
from Flanders and France the German armies 
are pursuing a course of wanton destruction 
which has always been regarded as in direct 
violation of the rules and practices of civilized 
warfare. Cities and villages, if not destroyed, 
are being stripped of all they contain not only, 
but often of their very inhabitants. The 
nations associated against Germany cannot 
be expected to agree to a cessation of arms 
while acts of inhumanity, spoliation, and deso- 
lation are being continued which they justly 
look upon with horror and with burning hearts. 

It is necessary also, in order that there may 
be no possibility of misunderstanding, that 
the President should very solemnly call the 
attention of the Government of Germany to 
the language and plain intent of one of the 
terms of peace which the German Government 
has now accepted. It is contained in the 
address of the President delivered at Mount 
Vernon on the Fourth of July last. It is as 
follows : 

"The destruction of every arbitrary power 
anywhere that can separately, secretly, and of 
its single choice disturb the peace of the world ; 
or, if it cannot be presently destroyed, at 
least its reduction to virtual impotency." 

The power which has hitherto controlled 
the German nation is of the sort here described. 



THE REPLY TO GERMANY 83 

It is within the choice of the German na- 
tion to alter it. The President's words just 
quoted naturally constitute a condition prec- 
edent to peace, if peace is to come by the ac- 
tion of the German people themselves. The 
President feels bound to say that the whole 
process of peace will, in his judgment, depend 
upon the definiteness and the satisfactory 
character of the guarantees which can be 
given in this fundamental matter. It is in- 
dispensable that the Governments associated 
against Germany should know beyond a 
peradventure with whom they are dealing. 

The President will make a separate reply 
to the Royal and Imperial Government of 
Austria-Hungary. 

Accept, sir, the renewed assurances of my 
high consideration. 

Robert Lansing. 



XV 

THE REPLY TO AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 
(October 19, 1918) 

From the Secretary of State to the Minister 
of Sweden: 

Department of State, 
Washington, October ig, iqi8. 

Sir, — I have the honor to acknowledge the 
receipt of your note of the 7th instant in 
which you transmit a communication of the 
Imperial and Royal Government of Austria- 
Hungary to the President. I am now instructed 
by the President to request you to be good 
enough through your Government to convey 
to the Imperial and Royal Government the 
following reply: 

"The President deems it his duty to say to 
the Austro-Hungarian Government that he 
cannot entertain the present suggestions of 
that Government because of certain events of 
utmost importance, which, occurring since the 
delivery of his address of the 8th of January 
last, have necessarily altered the attitude and 
responsibility of the Government of the United 
States. Among the fourteen terms of peace 



THE REPLY TO AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 85 

which the President formulated at that time, 
occurred the following: 

"'X. — The peoples of Austria - Hungary, 
whose place among the nations we wish to see 
safeguarded and assured, should be accorded 
the freest opportunity of autonomous devel- 
opment.' 

"Since that sentence was written and ut- 
tered to the Congress of the United States, the 
Government of the United States has recog- 
nized that a state of belligerency exists between 
the Czechoslovaks and the German and Austro- 
Hungarian Empires and that the Czechoslovak 
National Council is a de facto belligerent 
Government clothed with proper authority to 
direct the military and political affairs of the 
Czechoslovaks. It has also recognized in the 
fullest manner the justice of the nationalistic 
aspirations of the Jugo-slavs for freedom. 

"The President is, therefore, no longer at 
liberty to accept the mere * autonomy' of 
these peoples as a basis of peace, but is 
obliged to insist that they, and not he, shall 
be the judges of what action on the part of 
the Austro-Hungarian Government will satisfy 
their aspirations and their conceptions of their 
rights and destiny as members of the family 
of nations." 

Accept, sir, the renewed assurances of my 
highest consideration. 

Robert Lansing. 



XVI 

AUTOCRACY MUST GO 
{October 23, 1918) 

From the Secretary of State to Mr. Frederick 
Oederlin, Chargi d' Affaires of Switzerland: 

Department of State, 
Washington, October 23, iqi8. 

Sir, — I have the honor to acknowledge the 
receipt of your note of the 2 2d transmitting a 
communication under the date of the 20th 
from the German Government and to advise 
you that the President has instructed me to 
reply thereto as follows: 

"Having received the solemn and explicit 
assurance of the German Government that it 
unreservedly accepts the terms of peace laid 
down in his address to the Congress of the 
United States on the 8th of January, 19 18, 
and the principles of settlement enunciated 
in his subsequent addresses, particularly the 
address of the 27 th of September, and that it 
desires to discuss the details of their applica- 
tion, and that this wish and purpose emanate, 



AUTOCRACY MUST GO 87 

not from those who have hitherto dictated 
German policy and conducted the present 
war on Germany 's behalf, but from Ministers 
who speak for the majority of the Reichstag 
and for an overwhelming majority of the 
German people; and having received also the 
explicit promise of the present German Gov- 
ernment that the humane rules of civilized 
warfare will be observed both on land and 
sea by the German armed forces, the President 
vof the United States feels that he cannot de- 
fine to take up with the Governments with 
iich the Government of the United States is 
jpciated the question of an armistice. 
[e deems it his duty to say again, however, 
thai the only armistice he would feel justi- 
fied in submitting for consideration would be 
one which should leave the United States 
and the Powers associated with her in a posi- 
tion to enforce any arrangements that may be 
entered into and to make a renewal of hostili- 
ties on the part of Germany impossible. 

"The President has, therefore, transmitted 
his correspondence with the present German 
authorities to the Governments with which 
the Government of the United States is associ- 
ated as a belligerent, with the suggestion that, 
if those Governments are disposed to effect 
peace upon the terms and principles indicated, 
their military advisers and the military ad- 
visers of the United States be asked to submit 

7 



88 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

to the Governments associated against Ger- 
many the necessary terms of such an armistice 
as will fully protect the interests of the peoples 
involved and insure to the associated Govern- 
ments the unrestricted power to safeguard 
and enforce the details of the peace to which 
the German Government has agreed, provided 
they deem such an armistice possible from 
the military point of view. Should such terms 
of armistice be suggested, their acceptance by 
Germany will afford the best concrete evidence 
of her unequivocal acceptance of the terms and 
principles of peace from which the whole action 
proceeds. 

"The President would deem himself lacking 
in candor did he not point out in the frankest 
possible terms the reason why extraordinary 
safeguards must be demanded. Significant 
and important as the constitutional changes 
seem to be which are spoken of by the Ger- 
man Foreign Secretary in his note of the 20th 
of October, it does not appear that the prin- 
ciple of a Government responsible to the 
German people has yet been fully worked out 
or that any guarantees either exist or are in 
contemplation that the alterations of prin- 
ciple and of practice now partially agreed 
upon will be permanent. Moreover, it does 
not appear that the heart of the present dif- 
ficulty has been reached. It may be that 
future wars have been brought under the con- 



AUTOCRACY MUST GO 89 

trol of the German people, but the present 
war has not been; and it is with the present 
war that we are dealing. It is evident that 
the German people have no means of com- 
manding the acquiescence of the military au- 
thorities of the Empire in the popular will; 
that the power of the King of Prussia to con- 
trol the policy of the Empire is unimpaired; 
that the determining initiative still remains 
with those who have hitherto been the masters 
of Germany. Feeling that the whole peace of 
the world depends now on plain speaking and 
straightforward action, the President deems 
it his duty to say, without any attempt to 
soften what may seem harsh words, that 
the nations of the world do not and cannot 
trust the word of those who have hitherto 
been the masters of German policy, and to 
point out once more that in concluding peace 
and attempting to undo the infinite injuries 
and injustices of this war the Government 
of the United States cannot deal with any but 
veritable representatives of the German peo- 
ple who have been assured of a genuine 
constitutional standing as the real rulers of 
Germany. 

"If it must deal with the military masters 
and the monarchical autocrats of Germany 
now, or if it is likely to have to deal with 
them later in regard to the international ob- 
ligations of the German Empire, it must de- 



90 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

mand, not peace negotiations, but surrender. 
Nothing can be gained by leaving this essential 
thing unsaid." 

Accept, sir, the renewed assurances of my 
high consideration. 

Robert Lansing. 



XVII 

AN APPEAL TO THE ELECTORATE FOR 

POLITICAL SUPPORT 

(October 25, 191 8) 

My Fellow-countrymen, — The Congres- 
sional elections are at hand. They occur 
in the most critical period our country has 
ever faced, or is likely to face in our time. 
If you have approved of my leadership and 
wish me to continue to be your unembarrassed 
spokesman in affairs at home and abroad, I 
earnestly beg that you will express yourselves 
unmistakably to that effect by returning a 
Democratic majority to both the Senate and 
the House of Representatives. 

I am your servant and will accept your 
judgment without cavil, but my power to 
administer the great trust assigned me by the 
Constitution would be seriously impaired 
should your judgment be adverse, and I must 
frankly tell you so because so many critical 
issues depend upon your verdict. No scruple of 
taste must in grim times like these be allowed 
to stand in the way of speaking the plain truth. 



92 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

I have no thought of suggesting that any- 
political party is paramount in matters of 
patriotism. I feel too deeply the sacrifices 
which have been made in this war by all our 
citizens, irrespective of party affiliations, to 
harbor such an idea. I mean only that the 
difficulties and delicacies of our present task 
are of a sort that makes it imperatively nec- 
essary that the nation should give its un- 
divided support to the Government under a 
unified leadership, and that a Republican 
Congress would divide the leadership. 

The leaders of the minority in the present 
Congress have unquestionably been pro-war, 
but they have been anti-Administration. At 
almost every turn since we entered the war 
they have sought to take the choice of policy 
and the conduct of the war out of my hands 
and put it under the control of instrumen- 
talities of their own choosing. 

NO TIME FOR DIVIDED COUNSELS 

This is no time either for divided counsel 
or for divided leadership. Unity of command 
is as necessary now in civil action as it is 
upon the field of battle. If the control of the 
House and the Senate should be taken away 
from the party now in power, an opposing 
majority could assume control of legislation 
and oblige all action to be taken amid con- 
test and obstruction. 



AN APPEAL FOR POLITICAL SUPPORT 93 

The return of a Republican majority to 
either House of the Congress would, more- 
over, be interpretative on the other side of 
the water as a repudiation of my leadership. 
Spokesmen of the Republican party are urg- 
ing you to elect a Republican Congress in 
order to back up and support the President, 
but even if they should in this impose upon 
some credulous voters on this side of the 
water, they would impose on no one on the 
other side. It is well understood there as 
well as here that Republican leaders desire 
not so much to support the President as to 
control him. 

The peoples of the Allied countries with 
whom we are associated against Germany 
are quite familiar with the significance of 
elections. They would find it very difficult 
to believe that the voters of the United 
States had chosen to support their President 
by electing to the Congress a majority con- 
trolled by those who are not, in fact, in sym- 
pathy with the attitude and action of the 
Administration. 

I need not tell you, my fellow-countrymen, 
that I am asking your support not for my own 
sake or for the sake of a political party, 
but for the sake of the nation itself in order 
that its inward duty of purpose may be evi- 
dent to all the world. In ordinary times I 
would not feel at liberty to make such an 



94 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

appeal to you. In ordinary times divided 
counsel can be endured without permanent 
hurt to the country. But these are not ordi- 
nary times. 

If in these critical days it is your wish to 
sustain me with undivided minds, I beg that 
you will say so in a way which it will not be 
possible to misunderstand, either here at home 
or among our associates on the other side of 
the sea. I submit my difficulties and my 
hopes to you. 



XVIII 

THE GREAT WAR IS ENDED 
(Address to the Congress, November u, 1918) 

Gentlemen of the Congress, — In these 
times of rapid and stupendous change it will 
in some degree lighten my sense of respon- 
sibility to perform in person the duty of com- 
municating to you some of the larger cir- 
cumstances of the situation with which it is 
necessary to deal. 

The German authorities, who have at the 
invitation of the Supreme War Council been 
in communication with Marshal Foch, have 
accepted and signed the terms of armistice, 
which he was authorized and instructed to 
communicate to them. Those terms 1 are as 
follows : 

I — Military Clauses on Western Front 

One — Cessation of operations by land and 
in the air six hours after the signature of the 
armistice. 

Two — Immediate evacuation of invaded 

1 See Appendix. 



96 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

countries — Belgium, France, Alsace-Lorraine, 
Luxemburg — so ordered as to be completed 
within fourteen days from the signature of 
the armistice. German troops which have 
not left the above-mentioned territories with- 
in the period fixed will become prisoners of 
war. Occupation by the Allied and United 
States forces jointly will keep pace with 
evacuation in these areas. All movements 
of evacuation and occupation will be regulated 
in accordance with a note annexed to the 
stated terms. 

Three — Repatriation beginning at once and 
to be completed within fourteen days of all 
inhabitants of the countries above mentioned, 
including hostages and persons under trial or 
convicted. 

Four — Surrender in good condition by the 
German armies of the following equipment: 
Five thousand guns (2,500 heavy, 2,500 field), 
30,000 machine guns, 3,000 minenwerjer, 2,000 
aeroplanes (fighters, bombers — first D 73s, 
and night bombing machines). The above to 
be delivered in situ to the Allies and the 
United States troops in accordance with the 
detailed conditions laid down in the annexed 
note. 

Five — Evacuation by the German armies 
of the countries on the left bank of the Rhine. 
These countries on the left bank of the Rhine 
shall be administered by the local authorities 



THE GREAT WAR IS ENDED 97 

under the control of the Allied and United 
States armies of occupation. The occupa- 
tion of these territories will be determined by 
Allied and United States garrisons holding 
the principal crossings of the Rhine (Mayence, 
Coblenz, Cologne), together with bridgeheads 
at these points, in a thirty-kilometer radius 
on the right bank and by garrisons similarly 
holding the strategic points of the regions. 
A neutral zone shall be reserved on the right 
of the Rhine between the stream and a line 
drawn parallel to it forty kilometers to the 
east from the frontier of Holland to the 
parallel of Cernsheim and as far as practi- 
cable a distance of thirty kilometers from the 
east of the stream from this parallel upon 
Swiss frontier. Evacuation by the enemy of 
the Rhinelands shall be so ordered as to be 
completed within a further period of eleven 
days, in all nineteen days after the signature 
of the armistice. All movements of evacua- 
tion and occupation will be regulated accord- 
ing to the note annexed. 

Six — In all territory evacuated by the enemy 
there shall be no evacuation of inhabitants. 
No damage or harm shall be done to the per- 
sons or property of the inhabitants. No 
destruction of any kind to be committed. 
Military establishments of all kinds shall be 
delivered intact, as well as military stores 
of food, munitions, equipment not removed 



98 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

during the periods fixed for evacuation. 
Stores of food of all kinds for the civil popula- 
tion, cattle, etc., shall be left in situ. In- 
dustrial establishments shall not be impaired 
in any way, and their personnel shall not be 
moved. Roads and means of communica- 
tion of every kind, railroad, waterways, main 
roads, bridges, telegraphs, telephones, shall 
be in no manner impaired. 

Seven — All civil and military personnel 
at present employed on them shall remain. 
Five thousand locomotives, fifty thousand 
wagons, and ten thousand motor-lorries in 
good working order, with all necessary spare 
parts and fittings, shall be delivered to the 
associated Powers within the period fixed 
for the evacuation of Belgium and Luxemburg. 
The railways of Alsace-Lorraine shall be 
handed over within the same period, together 
with all pre-war personnel and material. 
Further material necessary for the working 
of railways in the country on the left bank of 
the Rhine shall be left in situ. All stores of 
coal and material for the upkeep of perma- 
nent ways, signals, and repair-shops shall be 
left entire in situ, and kept in an efficient 
state by Germany during the whole period 
of armistice. All barges taken from the Allies 
shall be restored to them. A note appended 
regulates the details of these measures. 

Eight — The German command shall be 



THE GREAT WAR IS ENDED 99 

responsible for revealing all mines or delay- 
acting fuses disposed on territory evacuated 
by the German troops, and shall assist in their 
discovery and destruction. The German com- 
mand shall also reveal all destructive measures 
that may have been taken (such as poisoning 
or polluting of springs, wells, etc.), under pen- 
alty of reprisals. 

Nine — The right of requisition shall be 
exercised by the Allied and the United States 
armies in all occupied territory. The upkeep 
of the troops of occupation in the Rhineland 
(excluding Alsace-Lorraine) shall be charged 
to the German Government. 

Ten — An immediate repatriation without 
reciprocity, according to detailed conditions, 
which shall be fixed, of all Allied and United 
States prisoners of war. The Allied Powers 
and the United States shall be able to dis- 
pose of these prisoners as they wish. 

Eleven — Sick and wounded who cannot be 
removed from evacuated territory will be cared 
for by German personnel, who will be left on 
the spot with the medical material required. 

II — Military Clauses on Eastern Front 

Twelve — All German troops at present in 
any territory which before the war belonged 
to Russia, Rumania, or Turkey shall withdraw 
within the frontiers of Germany as they ex- 
isted on August 1, 1 9 14. 



ioo GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

Thirteen — Evacuation by German troops to 
begin at once, and all German instructors, 
prisoners, and civilian as well as military 
agents, now on the territory of Russia (as 
defined before 19 14), to be recalled. 

Fourteen — German troops to cease at once 
all requisitions and seizures and any other 
undertaking with a view to obtaining supplies 
intended for Germany in Rumania and Russia 
(as defined on August 1, 19 14). 

Fifteen — Abandonment of the treaties of 
Bucharest and Brest-Litovsk and of the sup- 
plementary treaties. 

Sixteen — The Allies shall have free access 
to the territories evacuated by the Germans 
on their eastern frontier, either through Dan- 
zig or by the Vistula, in order to convey sup- 
plies to the populations of those territories 
or for any other purpose. 

Ill — Clause Concerning East Africa 

Seventeen — Unconditional capitulation of 
all German forces operating in East Africa, 
within one month. 

IV — General Clauses 

Eighteen — Repatriation, without reciproc- 
ity, within a maximum period of one month, 
in accordance with detailed conditions here- 
after to be fixed, of all civilians interned or 
deported who may be citizens of other Allied 



THE GREAT WAR IS ENDED 101 

or associated states than those mentioned in 
clause three, paragraph nineteen, with the 
reservation that any future claims and de- 
mands of the Allies and the United States of 
America remain unaffected. 

Nineteen — The following financial con- 
ditions are required: Reparation for damage 
done. While such armistice lasts no public 
securities shall be removed by the enemy which 
can serve as a pledge to the Allies for the re- 
covery or reparation for war losses. Im- 
mediate restitution of the cash deposit in the 
National Bank of Belgium, and in general 
immediate return of all documents, specie, 
stocks, shares, paper money, together with 
plant for the issue thereof, touching public 
or private interests in the invaded countries. 
Restitution of the Russian and Rumanian 
gold yielded to Germany or taken by that 
Power. This gold to be delivered in trust to 
the Allies until the signature of peace. 

V — Naval Conditions 

Twenty — Immediate cessation of all hostil- 
ities at sea and definite information to be given 
as to the location and movements of all Ger- 
man ships. Notification to be given to neu- 
trals that freedom of navigation in all terri- 
torial waters is given to the naval and mer- 
cantile marines of the Allied and associated 
Powers, all question of neutrality being waived. 



102 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

Twenty-one — All naval and mercantile ma- 
rine prisoners of war of the Allied and asso- 
ciated Powers in German hands to be returned 
without reciprocity. 

Twenty-two — Surrender to the Allies and 
the United States of America of one hundred 
and sixty German submarines (including all 
submarine cruisers and mine -laying sub- 
marines), with their complete armament and 
equipment, in ports which will be specified 
by the Allies and the United States of Amer- 
ica. All other submarines to be paid off 
and completely disarmed and placed under the 
supervision of the Allied Powers and the United 
States of America. 

Twenty-three — The following German sur- 
face war-ships, which shall be designated by 
the Allies and the United States of America, 
shall forthwith be disarmed and thereafter 
interned in neutral ports, or, for the want of 
them, in Allied ports, to be designated by the 
Allies and the United States of America, and 
placed under the surveillance of the Allies and 
the United States of America, only care- 
takers being left on board, namely: Six 
battle-cruisers, ten battle-ships, eight light 
cruisers, including two mine-layers, fifty de- 
stroyers of the most modern type. All other 
surface war-ships (including river craft) are 
to be concentrated in German naval bases to 
be designated by the Allies and the United 



THE GREAT WAR IS ENDED 103 

States of America, and are to be paid off and 
completely disarmed and placed under the 
supervision of the Allies and the United 
States of America. All vessels of the Auxiliary 
fleet (trawlers, mot or- vessels, etc.), are to be 
disarmed. 

Twenty-four — The Allies and the United 
States of America shall have the right to 
sweep up all mine-fields and obstructions laid 
by Germans outside German territorial waters, 
and the positions of these are to be indicated. 

Twenty-five — Freedom of access to and 
from the Baltic to be given to the naval and 
mercantile marines of the Allied and as- 
sociated Powers. To secure this, the Allies 
and the United States of America shall be em- 
powered to occupy all German forts, forti- 
fications, batteries, and defense works of all 
kinds in all the entrances from the Cattegat 
into the Baltic, and to sweep up all mines 
and obstructions within and without German 
territorial waters, without any question of 
neutrality being raised, and the positions of 
all such mines and obstructions are to be 
indicated. 

Twenty-six — The existing blockade condi- 
tions set up by the Allied and associated 
Powers are to remain unchanged, and all 
German merchant ships found at sea are to 
remain liable to capture. 

Twenty-seven — All naval aircraft are to be 



io 4 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

concentrated and immobilized in German 
bases to be specified by the Allies and the 
United States of America. 

Twenty-eight — In evacuating the Belgian 
coasts and ports, Germany shall abandon 
all merchant-ships, tugs, lighters, cranes, and 
all other harbor materials, all materials for 
inland navigation, all aircraft, and all ma- 
terials and stores, all arms and armaments, 
and all stores and apparatus of all kinds. 

Twenty-nine — All Black Sea ports are to 
be evacuated by Germany; all Russian war- 
vessels of all descriptions seized by Germany in 
the Black Sea are to be handed over to the 
Allies and the United States of America. 
All neutral merchant-vessels seized are to be 
released; all warlike and other materials of 
all kinds seized in those ports are to be re- 
turned, and German materials as specified 
in clause twenty-eight are to be abandoned. 

Thirty — All merchant-vessels in German 
hands belonging to the Allied and associated 
Powers are to be restored in ports to be speci- 
fied by the Allies and the United States of 
America without reciprocity. 

Thirty-one — No destruction of ships or of 
materials to be permitted before evacuation, 
surrender, or restoration. 

Thirty-two — The German Government will 
notify the neutral Governments of the world, 
and particularly the Governments of Norway, 



THE GREAT WAR IS ENDED 105 

Sweden, Denmark, and Holland, that all 
restrictions placed on the trading of their 
vessels with the Allied and associated coun- 
tries, whether by the German Government 
or by private German interests, and whether 
in return for specific concessions, such as the 
export of ship-building materials or not, are 
immediately canceled. 

Thirty-three — No transfers of German mer- 
chant shipping of any description to any 
neutral flag are to take place after signature 
of the armistice. 

VI — Duration of Armistice 

Thirty-four — The duration of the armistice 
is to be thirty days, with option to extend. 
During this period, on failure of execution of 
any of the above clauses, the armistice may be 
denounced by one of the contracting parties 
on forty-eight hours' previous notice. 

VII — Time Limit for Reply 

Thirty-five — This armistice to be accepted 
or refused by Germany within seventy-two 
hours of notification. 

Having finished his reading of the terms of 
armistice , the President continued as follows: 

The war thus comes to an end; for having 
accepted these terms of armistice, it will be 



io6 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

impossible for the German command to renew 
it. It is not now possible to assess the conse- 
quences of this great consummation. We 
know only that this tragical war, whose con- 
suming flames swept from one nation to an- 
other until all the world was on fire, is at an 
end, and that it was the privilege of our own 
people to enter it at its most critical juncture 
in such fashion and in such force as to con- 
tribute in a way of which we are all deeply 
proud to the great result. We know, too, that 
the object of the war is attained, the object 
upon which all free men had set their hearts, 
and attained with a sweeping completeness 
which even now we do not realize. Armed 
inperialism such as the men conceived who 
were but yesterday the masters of Germany is 
at an end, its illicit ambitions engulfed in black 
disaster. Who will now seek to revive it? 
The arbitrary power of the military caste of 
Germany which once could secretly and of 
its own single choice disturb the peace of the 
world is discredited and destroyed. 

PEACE AND JUSTICE ASSURED 

And more than that — much more than that 
— has been accomplished. The great nations 
which associated themselves to destroy it 
have now definitely united in the common 
purpose to set up such a peace as will satisfy 
the longing of the whole world for disinter- 



THE GREAT WAR IS ENDED 107 

ested justice, embodied in settlements which 
are based upon something much better and 
more lasting than the selfish competitive 
interests of powerful states. There is no 
longer conjecture as to the objects the vic- 
tors have in mind. They have a mind in the 
matter, not only, but a heart also. Then- 
avowed and concerted purpose is to satisfy 
and protect the weak as well as to accord 
their just rights to the strong. 

The humane temper and intention of the 
victorious Governments have already been 
manifested in a very practical way. Their 
representatives in the Supreme War Council 
at Versailles have, by unanimous resolution, 
assured the peoples of the Central Empires 
that everything that is possible in the cir- 
cumstances will be done to supply them with 
food and relieve the distressing want that is 
in so many places threatening their very lives, 
and steps are to be taken immediately to or- 
ganize these efforts at relief in the same sys- 
tematic manner that they were organized in 
the case of Belgium. By the use of the idle 
tonnage of the Central Empires it ought 
presently to be possible to lift the fear of utter 
misery from their oppressed populations and 
set their minds and energies free for the 
great and hazardous tasks of political recon- 
struction which now face them on every hand. 
Hunger does not breed reform; it breeds 



io8 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

madness and all the ugly distempers that make 
an ordered life impossible, 

For, with the fall of the ancient govern- 
ments, which rested like an incubus on the 
peoples of the Central Empires, has come 
political change not merely, but revolution; 
and revolution which seems as yet to assume 
no final and ordered form, but to run from one 
fluid change to another, until thoughtful men 
are forced to ask themselves, with what Gov- 
ernments and of what sort are we about to 
deal in the making of the covenants of peace? 
With what authority will they meet us, and 
with what assurance that their authority will 
abide and sustain securely the international 
arrangements into which we are about to en- 
ter ? There is here matter for no small anxiety 
and misgiving. When peace is made, upon 
whose promises and engagements besides our 
own is it to rest? 

WE MUST BE PATIENT AND HELPFUL 

Let us be perfectly frank with ourselves and 
admit that these questions cannot be sat- 
isfactorily answered now or at once. But 
the moral is not that there is little hope of 
an early answer that will suffice. It is only 
that we must be patient and helpful and mind- 
ful above all of the great hope and confidence 
that lies at the heart of what is taking place. 
Excesses accomplish nothing. Unhappy Rus- 



THE GREAT WAR IS ENDED 109 

sia has furnished abundant recent proof of 
that. Disorder immediately defeats itself. 
If excesses should occur, if disorder should for 
a time raise its head, a sober second thought 
will follow, and a day of constructive action 
if we help and do not hinder. 

The present and all that it holds belongs 
to the nations and the peoples who preserve 
their self-control and the orderly processes of 
their governments, the future to those who 
prove themselves the true friends of man- 
kind; to conquer with arms is to make only 
a temporary conquest; to conquer the world 
by earning its esteem is to make permanent 
conquest. I am confident that the nations 
that have learned the discipline of freedom and 
that have settled with self-possession to its 
ordered practice are now about to make con- 
quest of the world by the sheer power of ex- 
ample and of friendly helpfulness. 

The peoples who have but just come out 
from under the yoke of arbitrary government, 
and who are now coming at last into their 
freedom, will never find the treasures of lib- 
erty they are in search of if they look for them 
by the light of the torch. They will find 
that every pathway that is stained with the 
blood of their own brothers leads to the 
wilderness, not to the seat of their hope. They 
are now face to face with their initial test. 
We must hold the light steady until they find 



no GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

themselves. And in the mean time, if it be 
possible, we must establish a peace that will 
justly define their place among the nations, 
remove all fear of their neighbors and of their 
former masters, and enable them to live in 
security and contentment when they have set 
their own affairs in order. 

I, for one, do not doubt their purpose or 
their capacity. There are some happy signs 
that they know and will choose the way of 
self-control and peaceful accommodation. If 
they do, we shall put our aid at their disposal 
in every way that we can. If they do not, we 
must await with patience and sympathy the 
awakening and recovery that will assuredly 
come at last. 



XIX 

A PROCLAMATION OF THANKSGIVING FOR 

VICTORY 

(November 17, 1918) 

It has long been our custom to turn in the 
autumn of the year in praise and thanks- 
giving to Almighty God for His many blessings 
and mercies to us as a nation. This year we 
have special and moving cause to be grateful 
and to rejoice. 

God has in His good pleasure given us peace. 
It has not come as a mere cessation of arms, 
a mere relief from the strain and tragedy of 
war. It has come as a great triumph of right. 
Complete victory has brought us, not peace 
alone, but the confident promise of a new day 
as well, in which justice shall replace force and 
jealous intrigue among the nations. 

Our gallant armies have participated in a 
triumph which is not marred or stained by any 
purpose of selfish aggression. In a righteous 
cause they have won immortal glory and have 
nobly served their nation in serving mankind. 

God has indeed been gracious. We have 



H2 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

cause for such rejoicing as revives and strength- 
ens in us all the best traditions of national his- 
tory. A new day shines about us in which 
our hearts take new courage and look for- 
ward with open hope to new and greater duties. 

While we render thanks for these things, let 
us not forget to seek the divine guidance in 
the performance of these duties, and divine 
mercy and forgiveness for all errors of act or 
purpose, and pray in all that we do we shall 
strengthen the ties of friendship and mutual 
respect upon which we must assist to build 
the new structure of peace and good will 
among the nations. 

Wherefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President 
of the United States of America, do hereby 
designate Thursday, the twenty-eighth day 
of November next, as a day of thanksgiving 
and prayer and invite the people throughout 
the land [to cease upon that day from their 
ordinary occupations, and in their several 
homes and places of worship to render thanks 
to God, the Ruler of Nations. 



XX 

PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT 
(December 2, 1918) 

The President, appearing before both branches 
of the Congress, spoke as follows: 

Gentlemen of the Congress, — The year 
that has elapsed since I last stood before 
you to fulfil my constitutional duty to give 
the Congress from time to time informa- 
tion on the state of the Union has been so 
crowded with great events, great processes, 
and great results that I cannot hope to give 
you an adequate picture of its transactions 
or of the far-reaching changes which have 
been wrought in the life of our nation and of 
the world. You have yourselves witnessed 
these things, as I have. It is too soon to as- 
sess them; and we who stand in the midst of 
them and are part of them are less qualified 
than men of another generation will be to say 
what they mean or even what they have been. 
But some great outstanding facts are un- 
mistakable and constitute in a sense part of 
the public business with which it is our duty 



ii4 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

to deal. To state them is to set the stage for 
the legislative and executive action which must 
grow out of them and which we have yet to 
shape and determine. 

THE OVERSEA TRIUMPH 

A year ago we had sent 145,198 men over- 
seas. Since then we have sent 1,950,513, an 
average of 162,542 each month, the number, 
in fact, rising in May last to 245,951, in June 
to 278,760, in July to 307,182, and continuing 
to reach similar figures in August and Septem- 
ber — in August 289,570 and in September 
257,438. No such movement of troops ever 
took place before across 3,000 miles of sea, 
followed by adequate equipment and supplies, 
and carried safely through extraordinary 
dangers of attack — dangers which were alike 
strange and infinitely difficult to guard against. 
In all this movement only 758 men were lost 
by enemy attacks — 630 of whom were upon a 
single English transport, which was sunk near 
the Orkney Islands. 

I need not tell you what lay back of this 
great movement of men and material. It is 
not invidious to say that back of it lay a 
supporting organization of the industries of 
the country and of all its productive activi- 
ties more complete, more thorough in method 
and effective in results, more spirited and 
unanimous in purpose and effort, than any 



PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT 115 

other great belligerent had ever been able to 
effect. We profited greatly by the experi- 
ence of the nations which had already been 
engaged for nearly three years in the exigent 
and exacting business, their every resource 
and every executive proficiency taxed to the 
utmost. We were the pupils. But we learned 
quickly and acted with a promptness and a 
readiness of co-operation that justify our great 
pride that we were able to serve the world 
with unparalleled energy and quick accom- 
plishment. 

TRIBUTE TO TROOPS 

But it is not the physical scale and executive 
efficiency of preparation, supply, equipment, 
and despatch that I would dwell upon, but the 
mettle and quality of the officers and men we 
sent over and of the sailors who kept the seas 
and the spirit of the nation that stood behind 
them. No soldiers or sailors ever proved 
themselves more quickly ready for the test 
of battle or acquitted themselves with more 
splendid courage and achievement when put 
to the test. Those of us who played some 
part in directing the great processes by which 
the war was pushed irresistibly forward to 
the final triumph may now forget all that and 
delight our thoughts with the story of what 
our men did. Their officers understood the 
grim and exacting task they had undertaken 



n6 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

and performed with audacity, efficiency, and 
unhesitating courage that touch the story of 
convoy and battle with imperishable dis- 
tinction at every turn, whether the enterprise 
were great or small — from their chiefs, Per- 
shing and Sims, down to the youngest lieu- 
tenant; and their men were worthy of them — 
such men as hardly need to be commanded, 
and go to their terrible adventure blithely 
and with the quick intelligence of those who 
know just what it is they would accomplish. 
I am proud to be the fellow-countryman of 
men of such stuff and valor. Those of us who 
stayed at home did our duty; the war could 
not have been won or the gallant men who 
fought it given their opportunity to win it 
otherwise; but for many a long day we shall 
think ourselves "accurs'd we were not there, 
and hold our manhoods cheap while any speaks 
that fought," with these at St. Mihiel or 
Thierry. The memory of those days of 
triumphant battle will go with these fortunate 
men to their graves; and each will have his 
favorite memory. "Old men forget; yet all 
shall be forgot, but he'll remember with ad- 
vantages what feats he did that day!" 

What we all thank God for with deepest 
gratitude is that our men went in force into 
the line of battle just at the critical moment 
when the whole fate of the world seemed to 
hang in the balance, and threw their fresh 



PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT 117 

strength into the ranks of freedom in time to 
turn the whole tide and sweep of the fateful 
struggle — turn it once for all, so that thence- 
forth it was back, back, back for their enemies; 
always back, never again forward ! After that 
it was only a scant four months before the 
commanders of the Central Empires knew 
themselves beaten; and now their very em- 
pires are in liquidation! 

UNITY OF THE NATIONS 

And throughout it all how fine the spirit 
of the nation was; what unity of purpose, 
what untiring zeal! What elevation of pur- 
pose ran through all its splendid display of 
strength, its untiring accomplishment. I have 
said that those of us who stayed at home to 
do the work of organization and supply will 
always wish that we had been with the men 
whom we sustained by our labor; but we can 
never be ashamed. It has been an inspiring 
thing to be here in the midst of fine men who 
had turned aside from every private interest of 
their own and devoted the whole of their 
trained capacity to the tasks that supplied 
the sinews of the whole great undertaking! 
The patriotism, the unselfishness, the thorough- 
going devotion and distinguished capacity that 
marked their toilsome labors day after day, 
month after month, have shown them fit mates 
and comrades of the men in the trenches and 



n8 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

on the sea. And not the men here in Washing- 
ton only. They have but directed the vast 
achievement. Throughout innumerable fac- 
tories, upon innumerable farms, in the depths 
of coal-mines and iron-mines and copper- 
mines, wherever the stuffs of industry were to 
be obtained and prepared, in the shipyards, 
on railways, at the docks, on the sea, in every 
labor that was needed to sustain the battle- 
lines, men have vied with each other to do 
their part and do it well. They can look any 
man at arms in the face and say, we also 
strove to win and gave the best that was in 
us to make our fleets and armies sure of their 
triumph ! 

And what shall we say of the women — of 
their instant intelligence, quickening every task 
that they touched; their capacity for organi- 
zation and co-operation, which gave their ac- 
tion discipline and enhanced the effectiveness 
of everything they attempted; their aptitude 
at tasks to which they had never before set 
their hands; their utter self-sacrifice alike in 
what they did and in what they gave? Their 
contribution to the great result is beyond 
appraisal. They have added a new luster to 
the annals of American womanhood. 

APPEAL FOR SUFFRAGE 

The least tribute we can pay them is to 
make them the equals of men in political rights 



PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT 119 

as they have proved themselves their equals in 
every field of practical work they have entered, 
whether for themselves or for their country. 
These great days of completed achievements 
would be sadly marred were we to omit that 
act of justice. Besides the immense practical 
services they have rendered, the women of the 
country have been the moving spirits in the 
systematic economies by which our people 
have voluntarily assisted to supply the suffer- 
ing peoples of the world and the armies upon 
every front with food and everything else 
that we had that might serve the common 
cause. The details of such a story can never 
be fully written, but we carry them at our 
hearts and thank God that we can say that 
we are the kinsmen of such. 

And now we are sure of the great triumph 
for which every sacrifice was made. It has 
come, come in its completeness, and with the 
pride and inspiration of these days of achieve- 
ment quick within us we turn to the tasks 
of peace again — a peace secure against the 
violence of irresponsible monarchs and am- 
bitious military coteries — and make ready for 
a new order, for new foundations of justice 
and fair dealing. 

SEEK INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE 

We are about to give order and organi- 
zation to this peace, not only for ourselves, but 
9 



120 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

for the other peoples of the world as well, so 
far as they will suffer us to serve them. It 
is international justice that we seek, not do- 
mestic safety merely. Our thoughts have 
dwelt of late upon Europe, upon Asia, upon 
the near and the far East, very little upon 
the acts of peace and accommodation that 
wait to be performed at our own doors. 
While we are adjusting our relations with the 
rest of the world is it not of capital impor- 
tance that we should clear away all grounds 
of misunderstanding with our immediate 
neighbors and give proof of the friendship we 
really feel? I hope that the members of the 
Senate will permit me to speak once more of 
the unratified treaty of friendship and ad- 
justment with the Republic of Colombia. I 
very earnestly urge upon them an early and 
favorable action upon that vital matter. I 
believe that they will feel, with me, that the 
stage of affairs is now set for such action as 
will be not only just but generous and in the 
spirit of the new age upon which we have 
so happily entered. 

So far as our domestic affairs are concerned, 
the problem of our return to peace is a problem 
of economic and industrial readjustment. 
That problem is less serious for us than it 
may turn out to be for the nations which have 
suffered the disarrangements and the losses 



PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT 121 

of the war longer than we. Our people, more- 
over, do not wait to be coached and led. 
They know their own business, are quick and 
resourceful at every readjustment, definite in 
purpose and self-reliant in action. Any lead- 
ing-strings we might seek to put them in would 
speedily become hopelessly tangled because 
they would pay no attention to them and go 
their own way. All that we can do as their 
legislative and executive servants is to mediate 
the process of change here, there, and else- 
where as we may. I have heard much coun- 
sel as to the plans that should be formed 
and personally conducted to a happy con- 
summation, but from no quarter have I 
seen any general scheme of " reconstruction' ' 
emerge which I thought it likely we could 
force our spirited business men and self- 
reliant laborers to accept with due pliancy 
and obedience. 

NEED OF AMERICAN AID 

While the war lasted we set up many 
agencies by which to direct the industries of 
the country in the services it was necessary 
for them to render, by which to make sure of 
an abundant supply of the materials needed, 
by which to check undertakings that could 
for the time be dispensed with and stimulate 
those that were most serviceable in war, by 



122 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

which to gain for the purchasing departments 
of the Government a certain control over the 
prices of essential articles and materials, by 
which to restrain trade with alien enemies, 
make the most of the available shipping and 
systematize financial transactions, both public 
and private, so that there would be no un- 
necessary conflict or confusion — by which, 
in short, to put every material energy of the 
country in harness to draw the common load 
and make of us one team in the accomplish- 
ment of a great task. But the moment we 
knew the armistice to have been signed we 
took the harness off. Raw materials upon 
which the Government had kept its hand for 
fear there should not be enough for the in- 
dustries that supplied the armies have been 
released and put into the general market again. 
Great industrial plants whose whole output 
and machinery had been taken over for the 
uses of the Government have been set free 
to return to the uses to which they were put 
before the war. It has not been possible to 
remove so readily or so quickly the control 
of foodstuffs and of shipping because the 
world has still to be fed from our granaries and 
the ships are still needed to send supplies to 
our men overseas and to bring the men back 
as fast as the disturbed conditions on the 
other side of the water permit; but even 
there restraints are being relaxed as much as 



PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT 123 

possible and more and more as the weeks 
go by. 

EFFICIENCY AT HOME 

Never before have there been agencies in 
existence in this country which knew so much 
of the field of supply, of labor and of industry, 
as the War Industries Board, the War Trade 
Board, the Labor Department, the Food 
Administration, and the Fuel Administration 
have known since the labors became thor- 
oughly systematized ; and they have not been 
isolated agencies; they have been directed 
by men who represented the permanent de- 
partments of the Government and so have 
been the centers of unified and co-operative 
action. It has been the policy of the Execu- 
tive, therefore, since the armistice was assured 
(which is in effect a complete submission of 
the enemy), to put the knowledge of these 
bodies at the disposal of the business men of 
the country and to offer their intelligent medi- 
ation at every point and in every matter 
where it was desired. It is surprising how fast 
the process of return to a peace footing has 
moved in the three weeks since the fighting 
stopped. It promises to outrun any inquiry 
that may be instituted and any aid that may be 
offered. It will not be easy to direct it any 
better than it will direct itself. The Ameri- 
can business man is of quick initiative. 



I2 4 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 



WORK OF RE-EMPLOYMENT 

The ordinary and normal processes of 
private initiative will not, however, provide 
immediate employment for all of the men 
of our returning armies. Those who are of 
trained capacity, those who are skilled work- 
men, those who have acquired familiarity 
with established businesses, those who are 
ready and willing to go to the farms, all those 
whose aptitudes are known or will be sought 
out by employers, will find no difficulty, it 
is safe to say, in finding place and employ- 
ment. But there will be others who will be 
at a loss where to gain a livelihood unless 
pains are taken to guide them and put them 
in the way of work. There will be a large 
floating residuum of labor which should not 
be left wholly to shift for itself. It seems to 
me important, therefore, that the develop- 
ment of public works of every sort should be 
promptly resumed, in order that opportuni- 
ties should be created for unskilled labor in 
particular, and that plans should be made for 
such developments of our unused lands and 
our natural resources as we have hitherto 
lacked stimulation to undertake. 

I particularly direct your attention to the 
very practical plans which the Secretary of the 
Interior has developed in his annual report 
and before your committees for the reclama- 



PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT 125 

tion of arid, swamp, and cut-over lands, which 
might, if the states were willing and able to 
co-operate, redeem some three hundred million 
acres of land for cultivation. There are said 
to be fifteen or twenty million acres of land 
in the West at present arid, for whose rec- 
lamation water is available, if properly con- 
served. There are about two hundred and 
thirty million acres from which the forests 
have been cut, but which have never yet been 
cleared for the plow and which lie waste and 
desolate. These lie scattered all over the 
Union. And there are nearly eighty million 
acres of land that He under swamps or sub- 
ject to periodical overflow or too wet for 
anything but grazing, which it is perfectly 
feasible to drain and protect and redeem. 
The Congress can at once direct thousands of 
returning soldiers to the reclamation of the 
arid lands, which it has already undertaken, 
if it will but enlarge the plans and the ap- 
propriations which it has intrusted to the 
Department of the Interior. It is possible 
in dealing with our unused land to effect 
a great rural and agricultural development 
which will afford the best sort of oppor- 
tunity to men who want to help them- 
selves, and the Secretary of the Interior 
has thought the possible methods out in a 
way which is worthy of your most friendly 
attention. 



126 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

AID FOR FRANCE AND BELGIUM 

I have spoken of the control which must yet 
for a while, perhaps for a long while, be ex- 
ercised over shipping because of the priority 
of service to which our forces overseas are 
entitled and which should also be accorded 
the shipments which are to save recently lib- 
erated peoples from starvation and many 
devastated regions from permanent ruin. 
May I not say a special word about the needs 
of Belgium and northern France? No sums of 
money paid by way of indemnity will serve 
of themselves to save them from hopeless dis- 
advantage for years to come. Something 
more must be done than merely find the money. 
If they had money and raw materials in 
abundance to-morrow they could not resume 
their place in the industry of the world to- 
morrow — the very important place they held 
before the flame of war swept across them. 
Many of their factories are razed to the ground. 
Much of their machinery is destroyed or has 
been taken away. Their people are scattered 
and many of their best workmen are dead. 
Their markets will be taken by others, if 
they are not in some special way assisted to 
rebuild their factories and replace their lost 
instruments of manufacture. They should 
not be left to the vicissitudes of the sharp 
competition for materials and for industrial 



PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT 127 

facilities which is now to set in. I hope, there- 
fore, that the Congress will not be unwilling, 
if it should become necessary, to grant to some 
such agency as the War Trade Board the right 
to establish priorities of export and supply 
for the benefit of these people whom we have 
been so happy to assist in saving from the 
German terror and whom we must not now 
thoughtlessly leave to shift for themselves in 
a pitiless competitive market. 

QUESTIONS OF TAXATION 

For the steadying and facilitation of our 
own domestic business readjustments nothing 
is more important than the immediate de- 
termination of the taxes that are to be levied 
for 1918, 1919, and 1920. As much of the 
burden of taxation must be lifted from busi- 
ness as sound methods of financing the Gov- 
ernment will permit, and those who conduct 
the great essential industries of the country 
must be told as exactly as possible what 
obligations to the Government they will be 
expected to meet in the years immediately 
ahead of them. It will be of serious conse- 
quence to the country to delay removing all 
uncertainties in this matter a single day longer 
than the right processes of debate justify. It 
is idle to talk of successful and confident busi- 
ness reconstruction before those uncertainties 
are resolved. 



128 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

If the war had continued it would have 
been necessary to raise at least eight billion 
dollars by taxation, payable in the year 191 9; 
but the war has ended, and I am agreed with 
the Secretary of the Treasury that it will be 
safe to reduce the amount to six billions. 
An immediate rapid decline in the expenses of 
the Government is not to be looked for. Con- 
tracts made for war supplies will, indeed, be 
rapidly cancelled and liquidated, but their 
immediate liquidation will make heavy drains 
on the Treasury for the months just ahead 
of us. The maintenance of our forces on the 
other side of the sea is still necessary. A 
considerable proportion of those forces must 
remain in Europe during the period of oc- 
cupation, and those which are brought home 
will be transported and demobilized at heavy 
expense for months to come. The interest 
on our war debt must of course be paid and 
provision made for the retirement of the obli- 
gations of the Government which represent it. 
But these demands will of course fall much 
below what a continuation of military opera- 
tions would have entailed, and six billions 
should suffice to supply a sound foundation 
for the financial operations of the year. 

FINANCING OF DEBT 

I entirely concur with the Secretary of the 
Treasury in recommending that the two 



PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT 129 

billions needed in addition to the four bil- 
lions provided by existing law be obtained from 
the profits which have accrued and shall 
accrue from war contracts and distinctively 
war business, but that these taxes be con- 
fined to the war profits accruing in 191 8, or 
in 1 91 9 from business originating in war 
contracts. I urge your acceptance of his 
recommendation that provision be made now, 
not subsequently, that the taxes to be paid in 
1920 should be reduced from six to four bil- 
lions. Any arrangements less definite than 
these would add elements of doubt and con- 
fusion to the critical period of industrial 
readjustment through which the country 
must now immediately pass, and which no 
true friend of the nation's essential business 
interests can afford to be responsible for creat- 
ing or prolonging. Clearly determined con- 
ditions, clearly and simply charted, are in- 
dispensable to the economic revival and rapid 
industrial development which may confi- 
dently be expected if we act now and sweep 
all interrogation points away. 

I take it for granted that the Congress will 
carry out the naval program which was 
undertaken before we entered the war. The 
Secretary of the Navy has submitted to your 
committees for authorization that part of the 
programme which covers the building plans 
of the next three years. These plans have 



130 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

been prepared along the lines and in accordance 
with the policy which the Congress established, 
not under the exceptional conditions of the 
war, but with the intention of adhering to 
a definite method of development for the navy. 
I earnestly recommend the uninterrupted pur- 
suit of that policy. It would clearly be unwise 
for us to attempt to adjust our programs to 
a future world policy as yet undetermined. 

PROBLEM OF RAILROADS 

The question which causes me the greatest 
concern is the question of the policy to be 
adopted toward the railroads. I frankly turn 
to you for counsel upon it. I have no confident 
judgment of my own. I do not see how any 
thoughtful man can have who knows anything 
of the complexity of the problem. It is a 
problem which must be studied, studied im- 
mediately and studied without bias or preju- 
dice. Nothing can be gained by becoming 
partisans of any particular plan of settlement. 

It was necessary that the Administration 
of the railways should be taken over by the 
Government so long as the war lasted. It 
would have been impossible otherwise to 
establish and carry through under a single 
direction the necessary priorities of shipment. 
It would have been impossible otherwise to 
combine maximum production at the factories 
and mines and farms with the maximum 



PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT 131 

possible car-supply to take the products to 
the ports and markets; impossible to route 
troop shipments and freight shipments with- 
out regard to the advantage or disadvantage 
of the roads employed; impossible to subor- 
dinate, when necessary, all questions of con- 
venience to the public necessity; impossible 
to give the necessary financial support to the 
roads from the public treasury. But all 
these necessities have now been served, and 
the question is, what is best for the railroads 
and for the public in the future? 

Exceptional circumstances and exceptional 
methods of administration were not needed 
to convince us that the railroads were not 
equal to the immense tasks of transportation 
imposed upon them by the rapid and continu- 
ous development of the industries of the coun- 
try. We knew that already. And we know 
that they were unequal to it partly because 
their full co-operation was rendered impossible 
by law and their competition made obliga- 
tory, so that it has been impossible to assign 
to them severally the traffic which could best 
be carried by their respective lines in the in- 
terest of expedition and national economy. 

SEEKS AID OF CONGRESS 

We may hope, I believe, for the formal 
conclusion of the war by treaty by the time 
spring has come. 



132 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

The twenty-one months to which the present 
control of the railways is limited after formal 
proclamation of peace shall have been made 
will run at the farthest, I take it for granted, 
only to the January of 192 1. The full equip- 
ment of the railways which the Federal ad- 
ministration had planned could not be com- 
pleted within any such period. The present 
law does not permit the use of the revenues of 
the several roads for the execution of such 
plans except by formal contract with their 
directors, some of whom will consent while 
some will not, and therefore does not afford 
sufficient authority to undertake improve- 
ments upon the scale upon which it would be 
necessary to undertake them. Every ap- 
proach to this difficult subject - matter of 
decision brings us face to face, therefore, 
with this unanswered question: What is it 
right that we should do with the railroads, in 
the interest of the public and in fairness to 
their owners? Let me say at once that I 
have no answer ready. The only thing that 
is perfectly clear to me is that it is not fan- 
either to the public or to the owners of the 
railroads to leave the question unanswered 
and that it will presently become my duty to 
relinquish control of the roads, even before 
the expiration of the statutory period, unless 
there should appear some clear prospect in 
the mean time of a legislative solution. Their 



PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT 133 

release would at least produce one element of 
a solution, namely, certainty and a quick 
stimulation of private initiative. 

I believe that it will be serviceable for me 
to set forth as explicitly as possible the alter- 
native courses that lie open to our choice. 
We can simply release the roads and go back 
to the old conditions of private management, 
unrestricted competition, and multiform regu- 
lation by both State and Federal authorities; 
or we can go to the opposite extreme and 
establish complete Government control, ac- 
companied, if necessary, by actual Govern- 
ment ownership, or we can adopt an inter- 
mediate course of modified private control, 
under a more unified and affirmative public 
regulation and under such alterations of the 
law as will permit wasteful competition to be 
avoided and a considerable degree of unifi- 
cation of administration to be effected, as, 
for example, by regional corporations under 
which the railways of definable areas would 
be in effect combined in single systems. 

CHANGE IN RAILROAD NEEDS 

The one conclusion that I am ready to 
state with confidence is that it would be a 
disservice alike to the country and to the 
owners of the railroads to return to the old 
conditions unmodified. Those are conditions 
of restraint without development. There is 



134 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

nothing affirmative or helpful about them. 
What the country chiefly needs is that all 
its means of transportation should be de- 
veloped, its railways, its waterways, its high- 
ways, and its countryside roads. Some new 
element of policy, therefore, is absolutely 
necessary — necessary for the service of the 
public, necessary for the release of credit to 
those who are administering the railways, 
necessary for the protection of their security- 
holders. The old policy may be changed 
much or little, but surely it cannot wisely be 
left as it was. I hope that the Congress will 
have a complete and impartial study of the 
whole problem instituted at once and prose- 
cuted as rapidly as possible. I stand ready 
and anxious to release the roads from the 
present control, and I must do so at a very 
early date if by waiting until the statutory 
limit of time is reached I shall be merely pro- 
longing the period of doubt and uncertainty 
which is hurtful to every interest concerned. 
I welcome this occasion to announce to the 
Congress my purpose to join in Paris the 
representatives of the Governments with 
which we have been associated in the war 
against the Central Empires for the purpose 
of discussing with them the main features of 
the treaty of peace. I realize the great in- 
conveniences that will attend my leaving the 
country, particularly at this time, but the 



PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT 135 

conclusion that it was my paramount duty 
to go has been forced upon me by considera- 
tions which I hope will seem as conclusive to 
you as they have seemed to me. 

PROMISES TO KEEP IN TOUCH 

The Allied Governments have accepted the 

bases of peace which I outlined to the Congress 

on the 8th of January last, as the Central 

Empires also have, and very reasonably desire 

my personal counsel in their interpretation and 

application, and it is highly desirable that I 

should give it in order that the sincere desire 

of our Government to contribute without 

selfish purpose of any kind to settlements 

that will be of common benefit to all the 

nations concerned may be made fully manifest. 

The peace settlements which are now to be 

agreed upon are of transcendent importance 

both to us and to the rest of the world, and 

I know of no business or interest which should 

take precedence of them. The gallant men 

of our armed forces on land and sea have 

consciously fought for the ideals which they 

knew to be the ideals of their country; I 

have sought to express those ideals; they 

have accepted my statements of them as the 

substance of their own thought and purpose, 

as the associated Governments have accepted 

them; I owe it to them to see to it, so far as in 

me lies, that no false or mistaken interpreta- 
10 



136 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

tion is put upon them, and no possible effort 
omitted to realize them. It is now my duty 
to play my full part in making good what they 
offered their life's blood to obtain. I can think 
of no call to service which could transcend this. 

EXPLAINS CABLE SEIZURE 

I shall be in close touch with you and 
with affairs on this side of the water, and you 
will know all that I do. At my request the 
French and English Governments have abso- 
lutely removed the censorship of cable news 
which until within a fortnight they had main- 
tained, and there is now no censorship what- 
ever exercised at this end except upon at- 
tempted trade communications with enemy 
countries. It has been necessary to keep 
an open wire constantly available between 
Paris and the Department of State and 
another between France and the Department 
of War. In order that this might be done with 
the least possible interference with the other 
uses of the cables, I have temporarily taken 
over the control of both cables in order that 
they may be used as a single system. I did 
so at the advice of the most experienced 
cable officials, and I hope that the results 
will justify my hope that the news of the next 
few months may pass with the utmost free- 
dom and with the least possible delay from 
each side of the sea to the other. 



PROBLEMS OF READJUSTMENT 137 

CALLS FOR UNITED SUPPORT 

May I not hope, gentlemen of the Congress, 
that in the delicate tasks I shall have to per- 
form on the other side of the sea, in my efforts 
truly and faithfully to interpret the principles 
and purposes of the country we love, I may 
have the encouragement and the added 
strength of your united support? I realize 
the magnitude and difficulty of the duty I 
am undertaking. I am poignantly aware of 
its grave responsibilities. I am the servant 
of the nation. I can have no private thought 
or purpose of my own in performing such an 
errand. I go to give the best that is in me 
to the common settlements which I must 
now assist in arriving at in conference with the 
other working heads of the associated Govern- 
ments. I shall count upon your friendly 
countenance and encouragement. I shall not 
be inaccessible. The cables and the wireless 
will render me available for any counsel or 
service you may desire of me, and I shall be 
happy in the thought that I am constantly 
in touch with the weighty matters of domestic 
policy with which we shall have to deal. I 
shall make my absence as brief as possible and 
shall hope to return with the happy assurance 
that it has been possible to translate into 
action the great ideals for which America has 
striven. 



APPENDIX 

REVISED TEXT OF THE ARMISTICE 

In the course of his address to the Congress on 
November n, 191 8, 1 President Wilson read the orig- 
inal text of the armistice agreement, which had been 
sent by cable to the United States Government before 
that agreement had been signed at Marshal Foch's 
headquarters by Germany's delegated representatives. 
Before its conditions were accepted and the document 
was signed, several important changes were made 
from the original text. The complete revised text 
of the armistice, as signed on November n, 191 8, 
follows, the altered clauses being printed in italic 
type: 

I — Military Clauses on Western Front 

One — Cessation of operations by land and in the 
air six hours after the signature of the armistice. 

Two — Immediate evacuation of invaded coun- 
tries: Belgium, France, Alsace-Lorraine, Luxem- 
burg, so ordered as to be completed within fourteen 
days from the signature of the armistice. German 
troops which have not left the above-mentioned 
territories within the period fixed will become 
prisoners of war. Occupation by the Allied and 
*See page 95. 



140 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

United States forces jointly will keep pace with 
evacuation in these areas. All movements of evacu- 
ation and occupation will be regulated in accord- 
ance with a note annexed to the stated terms. 

Three — Repatriation beginning at once to be com- 
pleted within fifteen days of all the inhabitants of the 
countries above enumerated (including hostages, per- 
sons under trial or convicted). 

Four — Surrender in good condition by the German 
Armies of the following war material: Five thousand 
guns {2,500 heavy, and 2,500 field), 25,000 machine 
guns, 3,000 minenwerfer, 1,700 air-planes (fighters, 
bombers — firstly, all of the D fs and all the night 
bombing machines). The above to be delivered in 
situ to the Allied and United States troops in accord- 
ance with the detailed conditions laid down in the 
note (annexure No. 1) drawn up at the moment of 
the signing of the armistice. 

Five — Evacuation by the German armies of the 
countries on the left bank of the Rhine. The coun- 
tries on the left bank of the Rhine shall be adminis- 
tered by the local troops of occupation. The occu- 
pation of these territories will be carried out by 
Allied and United States garrisons holding the 
principal crossings of the Rhine (Mayence, Co- 
blenz, Cologne), together with the bridgeheads at 
these points of a thirty-kilometer radius on the right 
bank and by garrisons similarly holding the strategic 
points of the regions. A neutral zone shall be reserved 
on the right bank of the Rhine between the stream and a 
line drawn parallel to the bridgeheads and to the stream 
and at a distance of ten kilometers from the frontier 
of Holland up to the frontier of Switzerland. The 
evacuation by the enemy of the Rhine lands (left and 



APPENDIX 141 

right bank) shall be so ordered as to be completed 
within a further period of sixteen days, in all, thirty- 
one days after the signing of the armistice. All the 
movements of evacuation or occupation are regulated 
by the note (annexure No. 1) drawn up at the moment 
of the signing of the armistice. 

Six — In all territories evacuated by the enemy 
there shall be no evacuation of inhabitants; no 
damage or harm shall be done to the persons or 
property of the inhabitants. No person shall be 
prosecuted for offenses of participation in war 
measures prior to the signing of the armistice. No 
destruction of any kind shall be committed. Mili- 
tary establishments of all kinds shall be delivered 
intact, as well as military stores of food, munitions, 
and equipment not removed during the time fixed 
for evacuation. Stores of food of all kinds for the 
civil population, cattle, etc., shall be left in situ. 
Industrial establishments shall not be impaired in 
any way and their personnel shall not be removed. 

Seven — Roads and means of communication of 
every kind, railroads, waterways, main roads, 
bridges, telegraphs, telephones, shall be in no 
manner impaired. All civil and military per- 
sonnel at present employed on them shall remain. 
Five thousand locomotives and one hundred and fifty 
thousand wagons in good working order, with all 
necessary spare parts and fittings, shall be delivered 
to the associated Powers within the period fixed in 
annexure No. 2, and total of which shall not exceed 
thirty-one days. There shall likewise be delivered 
five thousand motor - lorries (camion automobiles) 
in good order, within the period of thirty-six days. 
The railways of Alsace-Lorraine shall be handed over 



142 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

within the period of thirty-one days, together with 
pre-war personnel and material. Further, the ma- 
terial necessary for the working of railways in the 
countries on the left bank of the Rhine shall be left 
in situ. All stores of coal and material for the up- 
keep of permanent ways, signals, and repair shops 
shall be left in situ. These stores shall be maintained 
by Germany in so far as concerns the working of the 
railroads in the countries on the left bank of the Rhine. 
All barges taken from the Allies shall be restored to 
them. The note {annexure No. 2) regulates the de- 
tails of these measures. 

Eight — The German command shall be respon- 
sible for revealing within the period of forty-eight 
hours after the signing of the armistice all mines or 
delayed-action fuses on territory evacuated by the 
German troops and shall assist in their discovery 
and destruction. It also shall reveal all destructive 
measures that may have been taken {such as poisoning 
or polluting of springs and wells, etc.). All under 
penalty of reprisals. 

Nine — The right of requisition shall be exercised 
by the Allied and United States armies in all occupied 
territories, subject to regulation of accounts with 
those whom it may concern. The upkeep of the troops 
of occupation in the Rhineland {excluding Alsace- 
Lorraine) shall be charged to the German Government. 

Ten — The immediate repatriation without reci- 
procity, according to detailed conditions which shall 
be fixed of all Allied and United States prisoners of 
war, including persons under trial or convicted. The 
Allied Powers and the United States shall be able to 
dispose of them as they wish. This condition annuls 
the previous conventions on the subject of the ex- 



APPENDIX 143 

change of prisoners of war, including the one of July, 
iqi8, in course of ratification. However, the re- 
patriation of German prisoners of war interned in 
Holland and in Switzerland shall continue as before. 
The repatriation of German prisoners of war shall be 
regulated at the conclusion of the preliminaries of 
peace. 

Eleven — Sick and wounded who cannot be re- 
moved from evacuated territory v/ill be cared for 
by German personnel, who will be left on the spot 
with the medical material required. 

II — Disposition Relative to the Eastern 
Frontiers of Germany 

Twelve — All German troops at present in the ter- 
ritories which before belonged to Austria-Hungary, 
Rumania, Turkey, shall withdraw immediately 
within the frontiers of Germany as they existed on 
August 1, 1914. All German troops at present 
in the territories which before the war belonged to 
Russia shall likewise withdraw within the frontiers 
of Germany, defined as above, as soon as the Allies, 
taking into account the internal situation of these 
territories, shall decide that the time for this has come. 

Thirteen — Evacuation by German troops to be- 
gin at once, and all German instructors, prisoners, 
and civilians as well as military agents now on the 
territory of Russia (as denned before 19 14) to be 
recalled. 

Fourteen — German troops to cease at once all 
requisitions and seizures and any other undertak- 
ing with a view to obtaining supplies intended for 
Germany in Rumania and Russia (as defined on 
August 1, 1914). 



i 4 4 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

Fifteen — Renunciation of the treaties of Bucha- 
rest and Brest-Litovsk and of the supplementary 
treaties 

Sixteen — The Allies shall have free access to the 
territories evacuated by the Germans on their eastern 
frontier, either through Danzig or by the Vistula, 
in order to convey supplies to the populations of those 
territories and for the purpose of maintaining order. 

Ill — Clause Concerning East Africa 

Seventeen — Evacuation by all German forces op- 
erating in East Africa within a period to be fixed 
by the Allies. 

IV — General Clauses 

Eighteen — Repatriation, without reciprocity, within 
a maximum period of one month in accordance with 
detailed conditions hereafter to be fixed of all in- 
terned civilians, including hostages and persons under 
trial or convicted, belonging to the Allied or associated 
Powers, other than those enumerated in Article Three. 

Nineteen — The following financial conditions are 
required: Reparation for damage done. While 
such armistice lasts no public securities shall be 
removed by the enemy which can serve as a pledge 
to the Allies for the recovery or reparation for 
war losses. Immediate restitution of the cash de- 
posit in the National Bank of Belgium, and in gen- 
eral immediate return of all documents, specie, 
stocks, shares, paper money, together with plant 
for the issue thereof, touching public or private 
interests in the invaded countries. Restitution of 
the Russian and Rumanian gold yielded to Ger- 
many or taken by that power. This gold to be 



APPENDIX 145 

delivered in trust to the Allies until the signature 
of peace. 

V — Naval Conditions 

Twenty — Immediate cessation of all hostilities at 
sea and definite information to be given as to the 
location and movements of all German ships. 
Notification to be given to neutrals that freedom 
of navigation in all territorial waters is given to 
the naval and mercantile marines of the Allied and 
associated Powers, all questions of neutrality being 
waived. 

Twenty-one — All naval and mercantile marine 
prisoners of the Allied and associated Powers in 
German hands to be returned without reciprocity. 

Twenty -two — Surrender to ike Allies and United 
States of all submarines {including submarine 
cruisers and all mine-laying submarines) now 
existing, with their complete armament and equip- 
ment, in ports which shall be specified by the Allies 
and the United States. Those which cannot take the 
sea shall be disarmed of the personnel and material 
and shall remain under the supervision of the Allies 
and the United States. The submarines which are 
ready for the sea shall be prepared to leave the 
German ports as soon as orders shall be received by 
wireless for their voyage to the port designated for 
their delivery, and the remainder at the earliest pos- 
sible moment. The conditions of this article shall 
be carried into effect within the period of fourteen 
days after the signing of the armistice. 

Twenty-three— -German surface war-ships which 
shall be designated by the Allies and the United 
States shall be immediately disarmed and there- 



146 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

after interned in neutral ports or in default of them 
in Allied ports to be designated by the Allies and the 
United States. They will there remain under the 
supervision of the Allies and of the United States, 
only caretakers being left on board. The following 
war-ships are designated by the Allies: Six battle 
cruisers, ten battleships, eight light cruisers (in- 
cluding two mine-layers), fifty destroyers of the most 
modern types. All other surface war-ships (in- 
cluding river craft) are to be concentrated in German 
naval bases to be designated by the Allies and the 
United States and are to be completely disarmed and 
classed under the supervision of the Allies and the 
United States. The military armament of all ships 
of the auxiliary fleet shall be put on shore. All ves- 
sels designated to be interned shall be ready to leave 
the German ports seven days after the signing of the 
armistice. Directions for the voyage will be given by 
wireless. 

Twenty-four — The Allies and the United States 
of America shall have the right to sweep up all 
mine-fields and obstructions laid by Germany 
outside German territorial waters, and the posi- 
tions of these are to be indicated. 

Twenty-five — Freedom of access to and from the 
Baltic to be given to the naval and mercantile 
marines of the Allied and associated Powers. To 
secure this the Allies and the United States of 
America shall be empowered to occupy all Ger- 
man forts, fortifications, batteries, and defense 
works of all kinds in all the entrances from the 
Cattegat into the Baltic, and to sweep up all 
mines and obstructions within and without Ger- 
man territorial waters, without any question of 



APPENDIX 147 

neutrality being raised, and the positions of all 
such mines and obstructions are to be indicated. 

Twenty-six — The existing blockade conditions set 
up by the Allied and associated Powers are to re- 
main unchanged, and all German merchant-ships 
found at sea are to remain liable to capture. The 
Allies and the United States should give consid- 
eration to the provisioning of Germany during the 
armistice to the extent recognized as necessary. 

Twenty-seven — All naval aircraft are to be 
concentrated and immobilized in German bases 
to be specified by the Allies and the United States 
of America. 

Twenty-eight — In evacuating the Belgian coast and 
ports Germany shall abandon in situ and in fact 
all port and river navigation material, all merchant- 
ships, tugs, lighters, all naval aeronautic apparatus, 
material, and supplies, and all arms, apparatus, 
and supplies of every kind. 

Twenty-nine — All Black Sea ports are to be 
evacuated by Germany; all Russian war-vessels 
of all descriptions seized by Germany in the 
Black Sea are to be handed over to the Allies and 
the United States of America; all neutral mer- 
chant-vessels seized are to be released; all war- 
like and other materials of all kinds seized in 
those ports are to be returned and German ma- 
terials as specified in Clause Twenty-eight are to 
be abandoned. 

Thirty — All merchant-vessels in German hands 
belonging to the Allied and associated Powers are 
to be restored in ports to be specified by the Al- 
lies and the United States of America without 
reciprocity. 



i 4 8 GUARANTEES OF PEACE 

Thirty-one — No destruction of ships or of ma- 
terials to b!e permitted before evacuation, surren- 
der, or restoration. 

Thirty-two — The German Government will noti- 
fy the neutral Governments of the world, and 
particularly the Governments of Norway, Sweden, 
Denmark, and Holland, that all restrictions 
placed on the trading of their vessels with the 
Allied and associated countries, whether by the 
German Government or by private German in- 
terests, and whether in return for specific con- 
cessions, such as the export of shipbuilding ma- 
terials, or not, are immediately canceled. 

Thirty-three — No transfers of German mer- 
chant shipping of any description to any neu- 
tral flag are to take place after signature of the 
armistice. 

VI — Duration op Armistice 

Thirty-four — The duration of the armistice is 
to be thirty days, with option to extend. During 
this period if its clauses are not carried into exe- 
cution the armistice may be denounced by one of the 
contracting parties, which must give warning forty- 
eight hours in advance. It is understood that the 
execution of Articles 3 and 18 shall not warrant the 
denunciation of the armistice on the ground of in- 
sufficient execution within a period fixed, except in 
the case of bad faith in carrying them into execution. 
In order to assure the execution of this convention 
under the best conditions, the principle of a perma- 
nent international armistice commission is admitted. 
This commission will act under the authority of the 
Allied military and naval Commanders in Chief. 



APPENDIX 149 

VII — The Limit for Reply 

Thirty-five — This armistice to be accepted or 
refused by Germany within seventy-two hours of 
notification. 



This armistice has been signed the Eleventh of 
November, Nineteen Eighteen, at 5 o'clock French 
time. 

F. Foch. 

R. E. Wemyss. 

Erzberger. 

A. Oberndorff. 

Winterfeldt. 

Von Sadow. 



THE END 



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